CPSG Round Robin 2, Part 20:

Investigations Follow-up

by Judy

Summary of Parts 1 - 19: The CPSG Round Robin 2 retells the story of Tom Paris' undercover mission to identify the spy on Voyager in the second season. Although involved in a relationship with Chakotay, he was not allowed to tell the commander about his mission. After Tom successfully identifies the spy from his dangerous location on a Kazon vessel commanded by Cullah and Seska, Tom flees but is captured, tortured and raped. Chakotay rescues him only for both to be caught and tortured, with Chakotay raped by the Kazon. Tuvok's rescue is successful and the three return to Voyager. Once there, Chakotay hides away in his cabin, Tom drinks heavily, and all is not well.

Summary of Part 20: In this part, the holodoc conducts couple's therapy and individual therapy with Tom and Chakotay. Ongoing events prematurely end the therapy, at least for part 20, at a critical point.

Disclaimer: They're Paramount's, damn it. This part of the story is mine but all the foregoing belongs to a wonderful group of writers! Copyright, 1998. Public or private feedback is welcome. Email at jlf@door.net

Warning: Rated R. The therapy involves dealing with Tom's gang rape at the hands of the Kazon. This may be tough going for some. Please take this warning seriously. Also, I've compressed an awful lot of the therapy. Please don't believe it's this easy or this quick or that this is the only way it could have been conducted.

There are adult situations and language. The story portrays a relationship between two men, if this is not for you, please read elsewhere. There are abundant spoilers for episodes throughout the second season. Final Warning: it ends with a cliffhanger! And someone else will write the next part!

Archive/Post: CPSG only

10/24/98

**************

The Holodoc surveyed his office and counted one bored lieutenant and one impassive commander. He sighed. This wasn't going to be easy. "I've met with each of you separately the past two days and today we're meeting together." Hmm, that was obvious, the holodoc realized. Undeterred by this particular insight, he continued, "I want to work out an informal understanding of what we're going to deal with in upcoming sessions."

The lieutenant stirred restlessly as if fearing what was to come next. The commander glanced at the younger man off to his side and frowned slightly. Addressing his question to the holodoc, Chakotay cautiously wondered, "What kind of understanding?"

"A general commitment to work on certain issues."

"Like what?" Tom's question sounded hostile.

The holodoc locked eyes with Tom. In as nonjudgmental a tone as he could manage, given his programming, the doctor said, "Your drinking would be one of the first things."

"Wait a minute. We're here because Chakotay's been having nightmares. I'm fine."

"You've told me you want to work on your relationship."

"Well, then, help Chakotay and that'll help the relationship."

The holodoc turned to Chakotay, "What do you think?"

Chakotay looked at Tom. "I think we both have work to do. I'm willing to do whatever I can."

Both sets of eyes focused on Tom. Defensively, he said, "I'm willing to work on things."

"Good, I'm glad to hear your commitment," the holodoc affirmed.

"Well, yeah. But . . . "

"Let's come back to this in a minute. I want to mention some of the other issues that came up in our individual sessions." Tom subsided and the holodoc waited until Tom actually nodded his consent. "Thank you. Now, something I noticed is that each of you has told me important thoughts and feelings you've had that you haven't shared with the other. It's time to let each of you know these thoughts and let the other know he's been heard." The holodoc looked from one to the other and saw a wary acceptance in Paris' eyes and a flicker of pain in Chakotay's.

"Then, we need to deal with the traumas each of you went through at the hands of the Kazon. Tom, I know you believe it's important to put things like this behind you and get on with your life, and I appreciate how that's been a big help for you in the past and how difficult all this must be for you now. In order to put things behind you, it's going to mean looking at the trauma and dealing with it. What happened to you is too big to forget it happened. I wish that wasn't the case, but the events not long ago in Sandrine's tells me that what you've been doing isn't working."

"I . . . uh . . . don't know. I mean . . .I don't drink that much. I can stop if I want to." Tom felt an almost paralyzing fear that the holodeck was going to take away the one thing that had helped him. "I don't see what's wrong with having a drink. It really helps."

"Lieutenant, as a hologram, I have unlimited access to all medically related computer activity . . .before that information is altered." The holodoc noted Tom's sudden flush and knew that his sometime assistant had reached the proper conclusion. The doctor had a very accurate account of exactly how much alcohol Tom had been replicating. His point made, the holodoc turned to Chakotay, all the while understanding that confronting Tom on his drinking would be necessary before the session ended.

"Commander, what are your thoughts about the issues we should be dealing with?"

Chakotay's troubled expression told them that he wasn't particularly comfortable with the holodoc's plan either. "Do we have to talk about what happened on the Kazon ship?"

"Not talking about it is a large part of the problem. I know you're a private man, Commander, and this will not be easy for you, but I believe that going through with this will benefit you and your relationship with Tom in the long run. It'll take a lot of courage to go through with it."

There was silence as each man digested the task in front of them. Looking down at his hands doing push-ups on his knees, Tom worried, "Why did you single out my drinking?"

The holodoc leaned forward. "It really upsets you to talk about this."

"Yeah. I feel as if . . . as if . . . you want to take away everything and then . . .there won't be anything left for me to use . . . "

"And if there isn't anything left to use?"

"There won't be . . . I'll . . . " Tom's voice trailed off. No one said anything, but there was an expression of sympathy on Chakotay's face. Tom looked up briefly, then returned his gaze to his knees. He drummed nervous fingers on the right knee, then, realizing what he was doing, smoothed over the fabric of the pant leg. "I think . . . it's the only thing holding me together. If I get too far into what happened without something to stop my thoughts . . . "

The holodoc's voice was gentle, "There's something bad you think might happen . . . "

"Yeah." He managed to spit it out quickly, "I'll just go crazy. And stay crazy."

Pinned eyes swivelled from the doctor to Chakotay and then settled on the wrinkled fabric covering his knees. Protectively, Tom's arms went around himself.

"That's scary, Tom," Chakotay empathized.

"Yeah. So, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to keep what I drink or don't drink off limits."

"I wish I could tell you okay, but I can't. The drinking makes it difficult for me to follow your thinking. Your thoughts come out confused, your attention span appears short and you seem unable to focus for very long. We're going to need you to be able to think clearly and to focus on our sessions."

"You sound like a fucking textbook!" Tom spat at him. The holodoc waited him out, not rising to the bait. Finally, Tom frowned. "I don't know."

"You won't be alone," Chakotay told him.

"Tom," the holodoc used the lieutenant's first name deliberately, "he's right. You won't be alone. And I have medicines that'll afford a relatively painless detoxification. But we won't be able to work on your relationship if there's a third person in the relationship."

"You?"

"No. Alcohol is the third party here and it's unpredictable and volatile." Already knowing the answer to his next question from their one-on-one session, the doctor asked Chakotay, "What happens to the two of you when Tom's been drinking?"

Chakotay's response required very little thought on his part. "I feel as if I'm walking on egg shells. I don't know what I might say or do that could set off his anger. When he comes to bed after trying to disguise the alcohol on his breath, I feel as if a stranger has taken his place."

Tom shifted uncomfortably. "I didn't know." But instead of looking at his own behavior, Tom mounted an offense. "Well. What about Chakotay?"

Chakotay was puzzled. "What about me?"

"Are you going to give up your distrust of me?"

"I don't distrust you," Chakotay protested.

"Wait," the holodoc interrupted. "Tom, I'd like you to restate your question as an 'I' message."

"What?"

"Start with 'I feel' . . . "

"All right," Tom clearly didn't like the doctor's interference, but made an attempt to comply. "I feel that you don't trust me."

"That's a thought. Try a feeling. 'Chakotay, when you . . .whatever it is he does . . . then I feel . . ."

"Um, with all due respect, this is stupid."

"Humor me." The holodoc repeated his instruction, "'Chakotay, when you' . . . "

With a roll of his eyes, Tom tried. "Okay. Chakotay . . . "

"Look at Chakotay, not me."

"Do you want me to do this or not?" Tom's anger flared.

"Please."

With an elaborate sigh, Tom turned to Chakotay, "I'll try it again. Chakotay, when you believe Seska, that I delivered you to her and the Kazon, then I feel . . . hurt."

The holodoc turned to Chakotay. "What did you hear Tom say to you?"

"That he's . . . "

"Tell Tom."

Uncomfortable at the holodoc's direction, Chakotay turned to Tom, "You're hurt 'cause you think I don't believe you."

The holodoc sat back after asking Tom if that's what he meant.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, she's lied over and over. The one thing I wanted more than anything was to keep you and Voyager as far away from her as I could. I didn't bring you to them. I wouldn't."

Chakotay saw the film of tears that magnified the blue of Tom's eyes. "I know. I know, Tom. I'm sorry you ever felt that I doubted you. Whatever I did to let you believe it, I'm sorry."

Tom wiped at his eyes and smiled at the commander. "You mean that?"

"I do."

As the session went on, Chakotay told how betrayed he felt when Tom enacted his 'bad Paris' routine. He underscored how awful he'd felt when Tom had turned on him after he had realized that he, Chakotay, must be the problem and went to Tom to try to let him know it. And Tom had simply thrown everything back in the commander's face. "It was as if the deck of the ship had disappeared and let me fall through to the void outside. Everything I thought I knew about you and about us seemed to be wiped out. I couldn't trust myself anymore."

It was Tom's turn to apologize.

The holodoc called a halt to the session, reminding them that the technique he had taught them should be carried over to their talks without him. He gave them a homework assignment that each should work on. They were to tell the other one a fairly small and not particularly troublesome aspect from the past few months that involved a feeling which had been kept from the other.

Tom looked skeptical and Chakotay unreadable. The doctor reassured them, "I realize that this way of talking might seem stilted and stupid, to use Tom's word, but it's important to practice it." He didn't tell them that he felt there had been enough misunderstanding and silence between the two of them that they desperately needed some such technique to help clear the air.

Before they finished, he extracted a promise from Tom that he would remain behind for detoxing. At first Tom protested, but the holodoc pointed out how Tom's hands had begun to shake slightly as if he were suffering from alcohol withdrawal. In fact, Tom had been in some hurry to get out of sickbay. "I imagine you were looking forward to a drink."

Tom thought about it. "Sort of." He admitted, "It's more like I need it."

"A kind of tension's built up, hasn't it?"

"Yeah. And when I get what I need, I'll feel better."

"We have medications that can help you until your body adjusts to the removal of alcohol from your system."

"That's not how they did it in prison," Tom contradicted, remembering his forcible detox when he went to Auckland.

"This is Voyager, Tom, not a prison."

Unsure if he would agree with the doctor's assessment, Tom nonetheless knew that he couldn't afford any more breakdowns such as had happened in Sandrine's. Ensign Feeney and Kyle Layton had nastily teased him about his experiences at the hands of the Kazon. Tom had been drunk enough to lash out at the men, revealing far too much about his own regrets and bitterness. Another nudge in the direction of detox was that Tom did not want Chakotay to regard him as a stranger.

The detox proved to be a relatively painless purging of the alcohol from his system with medication to keep the irritability, twitching, and anxiety under control. When they were finished, the holodoc called Chakotay back. Tom would not leave sickbay alone, nor would he be alone for the next several days. Although he didn't leave sickbay free of any desire to drink, Tom did leave free of the physiological need to drink. The last words of the doctor to both of them were treated like a joke, a joke that came back to haunt them later. "It's going to get worse before it gets better."

**************

The doctor had put Tom in charge of planning their evening outside of either one of their cabins. Although Chakotay wanted to stay in his quarters, Tom used the holodoc's authority to bring the more reclusive man out to the beach resort for some swimming and companionship. Chakotay agreed but stipulated the drinks had to be nonalcoholic. After Tom made a face and a pitch for synthehol Chakotay gave him his variation of the captain's Death Glare. Rather gracelessly Tom conceded that maybe even synthehol wasn't such a good idea.

The recreation brought each man out from behind the barriers they'd used to hold the world at bay. They even laughed together as they carried out the doctor's homework assignment, finding the structured exchange to be very funny. Even so, they learned a little more about the other.

Without the alcohol, Tom found it difficult to sleep that night. For his part, Chakotay kept waking up with intermittent nightmares. About four in the morning, Tom gave up trying to sleep and restlessly rooted through PADDS in the living area to find something to take his mind off how much he wanted to take a drink. Reluctantly, he took one of the doctor's medications.

When Chakotay awakened from one of his nightmares and found Tom missing, he learned from the computer that it was almost five in the morning. Searching the cabin, he found Tom sitting at the table, head down, arm flung across the table, obviously asleep. Padding quietly over to Tom's side, Chakotay roused the sleepy man long enough to persuade him to come back to bed. His arm around Tom's waist, he guided Tom back to bed. Before he climbed into the bed with Tom, Chakotay stood looking down at the troubled man he loved so much. A tear cut a new riverbed down the commander's cheek. There was just so much undeserved pain there, Chakotay thought sadly.

*************

As the sessions continued with the holodoc, Tom opened up to Chakotay about how incredibly hard it had been for him to carry out the ruse and how many times he'd wanted to tell Chakotay but couldn't because the captain had ordered him not to. When he'd left Voyager to join the Talaxian ship, he'd been sure he would never return to Voyager. Chakotay finally understood that Tom had fully expected to die in the course of his undercover mission. The magnitude of the sacrifice Tom had been willing to make absolutely staggered the older man. Tom had given up the respect he'd worked so hard to earn in the eyes of his fellow crew members, he'd given up the love he'd finally, for once in his young life, enjoyed, and he'd been prepared to give up his life.

Even as Chakotay appreciated all of this about Tom, he felt a renewal of the deep shame over his own perceived cowardice. He was finally able to describe these feelings to Tom. And Tom knew what he meant, having lived with shame for so long himself. With the release of the shame also came the release of Chakotay's anger, anger at the captain and Tom for deceiving him, anger at Seska for her lies and creating a child without his consent, anger at Seska and the Kazon for torturing Tom while he listened and watched helplessly.

Tom's anger also came out, at Seska and the Kazon for torturing Chakotay in front of him and then using his own torture to break Chakotay, at the crew for their hostility, at the captain for putting him in a hopeless situation and not letting him tell the one person he both loved and hurt the most. But there was also anger with Chakotay for coming after him and making his sacrifices all in vain, as well as for Chakotay's repeated rejections of him once they were safely back on Voyager.

Tom's confusion and despair about Chakotay's responses to him went deep. He confessed that in the first rescue from the Kazon, before Chakotay had been raped but after he himself had been repeatedly abused, he had asked Chakotay to make love in the shuttle out of fear. When asked what he feared, Tom confessed that he feared that Chakotay expected this of him, that it was how he thought he was supposed to express his gratitude for the rescue. That Tom saw himself defined by his perpetrators was explored. It became clear that he saw himself as nothing more than a sexual object used to bring pleasure to someone else without regard for his own needs or desires.

Tom's mixing up the desires of his rapists who thoughtlessly used his body with his own desires brought Chakotay to tears. Had he understood this, he would have found another way to comfort the distraught young man on the shuttle. Although Chakotay had refused then to take Tom because of the seriousness of the pilot's injuries, nonetheless, he hadn't understood the darker motives that once again affirmed Tom's status as an object for another's pleasure. Instead, he had had sex with Tom believing this was what Tom wanted.

Bitterly, Chakotay realized he should have heeded that voice in his head when they were on the shuttle. The voice had told him it had been too easy.

Sorting out the fears, hurts, and humiliations associated with what had initially seemed to be nothing more than sex as relief, and even love, took a number of sessions. It became clear that Tom's problems viewing himself as someone with a right to experience as much pleasure as his partner were rooted in earlier experiences. The doctor asked and received permission from Tom to expand their contract to deal with these earlier issues as needed.

The now dormant sexual relationship between the two was a topic that had to be returned to time after time as each had deep scars from the gang rapes at the hands of the Kazon. But the doctor understood that he had to wait for more trust to be built up before he could tackle that subject in the way he knew it had to be approached.

Because the doctor worried that the anxiety Tom felt when the alcohol was no longer present to do its work would not receive enough attention in the couple's therapy, he worked with Tom alone on his alcohol dependency. The lack of alcohol had a number of destabilizing effects on the pilot, including insomnia, nightmares, panic attacks, and a diffuse restlessness. He encouraged Tom to find acceptable alternate ways of coping with this anxiety.

They both knew that Chakotay's meditation techniques would not work on the more activity oriented younger man. Instead, Tom found himself spending a lot of time in exercise programs on the holodeck, including programs that needed a friend, usually Harry or B'Elanna, to work out with him. In addition, the holodoc helped him to develop a list of activities he would do first when the urge to drink returned. Turning to his friends was at the top of the list.

Similarly, the doctor worked with Chakotay to find alternate ways to deal with his absorption over his perceived personal failures than the solitary brooding he'd relied upon for so long. Reaching out to Tom and to others on a daily basis was at the top of Chakotay's list.

*************

With the expression of anger out in the open about most of these painful issues, and with a great deal of anger work to help them deal with their feelings, the holodoc thought they had finally reached the point where they could handle the suppressed rage stemming from the rapes and torture at the hands of the Kazon and Seska. A strong degree of trust had been rebuilt between the two men. Furthermore, Paris had shown no signs of returning to drinking and Chakotay had begun to come back more and more from the dark place where he had dwelled alone and unresponsive for so long.

Despite all the groundwork, neither the holodoc nor Chakotay were prepared for the brittle and distant tone Tom used to describe what happened to him. It was almost as if they were back at the first session so many weeks ago with the defensively alcoholic Tom Paris.

"I remember that there were about twenty Kazon in the room. I'd been injured when they took the shuttle and they beat me up a little, too." At the holodoc's skeptical look, Tom amended his description. "All right. They beat me up a lot. That . . .was nothing, really. If Cullah said ten men raped me, then that's probably about right. I lost track."

Even though both had seen Seska and Cullah's messages to the ship, hearing Tom describe the events in his flat, distancing tone felt vastly different. Chakotay experienced the chill of space touch his heart. As Tom sat in the chair, arms across his chest, he radiated a threat that they had better not ask him anything more about it.

"That must have seemed like an eternity," the holodoc empathized quietly, knowing at this point he had to approach Tom's pain obliquely.

"Yeah. Well, I'd expected to die, you know by phaser or in a blown up shuttle. I didn't expect to be fucked to death." Tom closed his eyes, a sad underscoring on his already shuttered face.

"Let it out, Tom. Talk about it," the doctor urged quietly.

"What's to say?" Tom said in near defeat. "I hurt like hell. I kept screaming."

As he detailed what had happened to him, Tom wiped away the tears that had forged out of his eyes despite his attempt to control himself. Finally, Tom stopped talking altogether as he began to choke up. When Chakotay reached out to him, he shook off the other man's concern. "I'm only going to be able to do this once."

The doctor brought him a glass of water and some tissue for his face. When he'd drunk deeply and wiped his eyes, Tom nodded and the doctor took away the glass and used tissue.

Taking a deep breath, Tom continued. Anger mixed with grief as Tom remembered the terror and the horror of what Cullah and his men had done to him. "Somehow, I . . . my . . . I don't know how to describe this. But it was as if I was floating above my body, watching them do what they were doing.

"You know, someone would do something that hurt, and I would be saying in my head, 'oh, look, they just hurt me' or 'gee, there's a lot of blood'. I just watched as if the guy down there below me was some stranger. So how crazy is that?" Tom was close to breaking. "And you know the irony? Seska broke it up. She didn't want me dead just yet."

"You received medical treatment for your injuries," the doctor surmised.

As the doctor had hoped, his observation brought Tom back from the horror show replaying in his mind. Tom snorted, "Right. From Seska. Oh, she was so sympathetic. Gave me just enough medical care to make me presentable for the next round with Cullah, or maybe it was the guards. They got their turns in, too. And, shit, we haven't even mentioned the torture." By now Tom's defenses were crumbling. "Damn her all to hell!"

He was on his feet, kicking the chair away from him. At the wall, he drew his arm back, ready to pound his fist into the office wall. A large hand caught his arm on the upswing and turned Tom around, pressing him against Chakotay's chest as Tom finally let out the pain and humiliation and rage he'd been carrying around for so long. Chakotay let him pound away at the air behind him as he hugged Tom tightly.

With a gut wrenching scream, Tom crumbled to the floor and Chakotay followed him down, not letting him fall or hurt himself. Tom's cries echoed throughout the room as he vomited up the pain and humiliation to which he'd been subjected.

When Tom finally came back to himself, Chakotay was crying as well. He hadn't considered how much his lover had suffered and never let on. There had been only those rare moments, such as the drunken breakdown on the holodeck, that Tom had revealed himself. As if phaser blasted to the chest, Chakotay realized how often Tom had tried to turn to him when they'd first gotten back and how equally often he'd turned away the suffering man because he'd been so selfishly engrossed in his own shame.

The holodoc gently brought the two man back to their chairs to process what they'd just been through. With Tom now almost limp from exhaustion, the holodoc helped Tom to sort it all out. Given Tom's previously stated fear of going crazy, the doctor identified the dissociative experience as common to someone suffering from horrific abuse and not as a symptom that Tom was crazy. Tom thoughtfully digested that piece of information.

Hesitantly, as if sharing the burden of a frightening secret, Tom confided that it wasn't the first time he'd floated above himself. It had saved him before, but it had also almost convinced him that he was indeed crazy. And because he feared that self-description, he'd never told anyone of the experiences or of his fears.

Listening to Tom, Chakotay knew he wanted more than anything to be able to take away Tom's pain and provide comfort and reassurance. At the same time, when he expressed this desire, the doctor observed that perhaps he wasn't all that powerful. He also let Chakotay know that his support for Tom would be helpful.

After additional concentration on rebuilding Tom's sense of well being, the holodoc decided that Tom could leave sickbay with Chakotay. The doctor counted on the trust and support the two men had developed to enable Tom to get through the rest of the day without doing something self-destructive. At least now Chakotay was emotionally available to the younger man.

They would leave the tortures both had undergone and Chakotay's similar rape ordeal at the hands of the Kazon for another day. Enough ground had been covered in this session to keep them in supply with plenty of important as well as painful material for the counseling that would come in the days ahead.

The holodoc closed the session with expressions of support for Tom's strength and Chakotay's compassion and gave them an assignment to do something that would be really fun for both of them. He reassured them that if anything came up, he would be available. It wouldn't surprise him if this session had aroused painful memories in Chakotay even as it let Tom purge some of his.

As they were leaving, Chakotay apologized to Tom for not responding to Tom when they'd returned to the ship and swore he'd do whatever he could to make it up to the still shaken man standing next to him. Tom's mouth quirked as he drawled, "Damn right you will."

Chakotay shook his head with a smile on his face. "That Paris sense of humor . . .how do you do it?"

Tom smiled, not the smirk he so often hid behind, but a genuine smile that lit his reddened and swollen eyes, "I guess there's nothing else to do, Chak." He turned serious, "I mean, I've decided I want to have some kind of a life no matter how lousy a hand I've sometimes managed to deal myself."

"Or been dealt," Chakotay added knowingly.

"Yeah. That too. So, I guess there's nothing left but to laugh a little. You know?"

"Tom, if I had half your resilience . . . "

"Hey, don't sell yourself short, big guy."

*************

The next day, Chakotay and Janeway were bitten by an insect on an away mission. In short order, both were in stasis chambers because that was the only way to keep them alive until a cure could be found or until they were returned to the surface of the planet where the disease would be arrested. Assuring the doctor that he would be fine, that night, Tom replicated himself a bottle of scotch in Chakotay's quarters and planned to drink himself unconscious.

Almost trembling from the desire that surged through him for the dark oblivion the bottle promised, Tom deliberately postponed the moment by throwing off his uniform top, pants, and boots. Dressed in only his turtleneck and shorts, he didn't worry about company. He'd told his friends he wanted to be alone. Besides, the clothes had done nothing to ward off the chill that goose bumped his body. Only the scotch would do that.

Tom carefully set the bottle and glass on the coffee table. He tried to remember some of the things he'd learned about what to do to deflect the urge to drink. Comm someone to be with. Yeah, sure. Hey, Chakotay, how's stasis going? And he didn't feel like talking to B'Elanna and Harry, he'd already told them he was just going to clean up a few things in Chakotay's cabin and then go to bed. He really didn't want to see any more of the sympathy on their faces. And the holodoc? Well, he wasn't that desperate, was he?

All right, that was settled. There was no one to see. But he'd tried, Tom lied to himself solemnly. He reached for the bottle. His hand shook when he poured the amber liquid into the glass. Bringing the glass to his lips, he told himself he'd just sip it. But after the first burning drops of the liquid hit him, he tossed back the drink and reveled in how it shuddered its way down his throat. He tossed back another one and then another. He leaned back on the couch, arms out flung, savoring the way the alcohol warmed up all those cold spots with its warmth and heat.

When the door beeped, Tom looked at his bottle. Two thirds gone. Not enough to share with visitors, he thought drunkenly. Just have to tell them to go away. A little confused, he reminded himself that he'd already told his friends to stay away. So why were they here at Chakotay's door?

Unsteadily, with exaggerated care, Tom listed his way over to the door. Without stopping to think that it might be someone other than his friends, he let the doors swish open. Perplexed, he blinked at the sight of two unexpected men entering his quarters. The doors swished shut behind Ensign Feeney and Kyle Layton.

"Huh?" Tom asked as their identities finally filtered through the alcoholic fog. "I'm not entertaining tonight," he said carefully. "So, g'way."

The men exchanged amused glances. Layton spoke first, the leer on his face undisguised. "The Captain's gone, the first officer's gone, so we don't think your buddy's coming home tonight."

"Lonely, Paris?" Feeney mocked. "Need a little help here getting to bed tonight? Sure looks that way. You can hardly stand up. You should be grateful we came along."

The two men laughed themselves silly at Feeney's little joke. Then Layton declared, "I want to know what the fuck the Kazon saw in you."

Through his drunkenness Tom realized that these men meant trouble. He wasn't in Sandrine's with others nearby to come to his rescue. He'd have to get himself out of this. He tried talking first. "Look, guys. I'm not good company tonight. And besides, you don't want to mess with me. Not a good career move, you know? Hell, I'm second in line on this ship."

He was too drunk to know if his words made any sense,. But the two men shook their heads and laughed. "That's why we're here, dick head," Feeney told him. "Second in line. We plan to have you right under our thumbs. You'll do what we want."

"You guys are in some fantasy universe. You'll be in the brig, assholes." He wasn't too drunk to recognize the bizarre scenario for what it was.

"We have friends," Layton threatened. "You want *your* friends safe? That little bitch engineer?"

This had gone on long enough. He recognized that they had been drinking, briefly thinking, 'takes one to know one'. Whereas he was relatively harmless in this condition, unless provoked, these two seemed downright dangerous. Tom reached for his comm badge. Hmm, his comm badge wasn't there. That's right, it was on his uniform top somewhere . . . somewhere on the floor or wherever he'd tossed it. He opened his mouth to call the computer for security when Layton lashed out and decked him.

Feeney security locked the doors. Then both men carried the barely conscious pilot to the bed. Feeney stripped off Tom's shorts taking his time to intimately touch the moaning young man. Watching Feeney's hands on Tom's body more than he was watching what he was doing, Layton roughly removed Tom's turtleneck.

Tom was only dimly aware of what they were doing, until he felt the hands touching him. Fear drove out the alcoholic fog as effectively as the doctor's medicines. Never again, he vowed. When he tried to call out to the computer for security, Layton pressed a hand against Tom's mouth until Feeney found a long sock and used it to gag Tom as Tom struggled against the weight of both men.

Tom felt terrified that nothing was going to stop these two now. The two men knew it as well, their leers full of self-congratulation. Marshaling his poorly coordinated limbs, Tom kicked out his legs at the nearest crotch, but Layton turned and took the bare foot on his hip instead. Tom swung on Feeney and connected with the man's stomach, doubling him over. But Feeney didn't stay subdued for more than a moment.

Then both men were on him, viciously beating him. He felt stunning blows to this torso, stomach, back, and head. Dimly, before he lost consciousness, Tom thought he heard a commotion at the door. Confusing his centuries, Tom wondered if the calvary were coming to his rescue or if the new arrivals were friends of his attackers. As darkness descended, Tom caught a glimpse of the newcomers. He murmured, "calvary." But was it said in hope? Or in despair?

End Part 20