A Dying Wish
By Coral

Coral's Stories ~ Mail Coral ~ JCUKjnr

Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to Paramount.
This story was written in answer to the Dying Wish Challenge, where Janeway and Chakotay got together because of a crewmember's dying wish. This turned out as sickly sweet sap, especially near the end. You can see the sugar oozing out between the lines, it's so bad!

Smoke poured from the damaged hulk of the Delta Flyer, billowing out into the atmosphere and being blown away in the wink of an eye. Janeway was amazed that it could still issue forth at the rate it was after all this time. Vainly, she tried to find where it was coming from, but the smoke only got in her eyes and mouth, and made her cough and splutter.
"Tom? Tom, are you still all right?" she asked softly, placing an encouraging hand on his shoulder. With effort, Tom opened his eyes and gave her a weak smile in response.
"Never... better..." he coughed out before letting his eyelids drop again. With a worried frown, Janeway rearranged him to make him more comfortable, then limped over to the communications panel to try to send a distress call again.
"Janeway to Voyager, do you read? The Flyer's gone down on an L-Class planet. Paris requires urgent medical help. Do you hear me, Voyager? Chakotay? Tuvok?" With despair, she tried drawing power from the other systems on the Flyer, but she was so badly damaged that nothing made much difference. Coughing to get the smoke out of her throat, she tried again. "Delta Flyer to Voyager. This is Janeway. Please come in Voyager... Are you there?"
She turned back to Tom Paris as he started to cough violently, as if he were choking. Janeway cursed as she tried to find the medkit, but a thorough search had failed to reveal it earlier. There was nothing she could do for Paris at the moment except be there for him. Sitting beside him, she took his hand and wiped her other hand gently over his forehead. "It's all right, Tom," she reassured herself as much as she reassured him, "Voyager will be here any minute and we'll get you to sickbay. Bet you can't wait to see the Doctor."
Tom coughed again and opened his eyes slowly. "Captain," he coughed, gripping her hand tightly. "Tell B'Elanna I love her..."
"Hey, stop that," Janeway scolded, " You can tell her yourself as soon as we get back to Voyager."
"Not make it," Tom said, his voice starting to slur. Janeway could feel tears pricking the back of her eyes. Why the hell had this happened to them? Why?
"You'll make it Tom, that's an order."
He embarked on another coughing fit. When it was over, he looked her in the eye. "I'm nurse, not you..." he muttered. "Know I'm dying." He looked at her and started to talk urgently. "Tell B'Elanna I love her," he gasped, struggling to breathe. "I'm miss her... got to tell Chakotay..."
"Tell Chakotay what?" Janeway prompted as Tom trailed off.
"You love him..." Tom finished. "Got to be happy Captain... Promise?"
His voice trailed off and Janeway felt desperately for a pulse as he chest stopped rising and falling. Nothing. There was nothing. The only sound on the Flyer was the whistling of wind through the cracks in the hull, and Janeway's tears, finally released.
"Promise."

"Voyager to the Delta Flyer. Do you read? This is Commander Chakotay to the Delta Flyer, do you read us?"
Janeway wasn't sure how long she been sitting on the floor, crying and waiting for rescue. Her tear ducts were all dried up and she felt awful, as if she'd been sleeping in her clothes for a month. Her bruises and burns felt heavy, and she could hardly remember what to do when she heard Chakotay's voice over the Flyer's comm system.
Slowly, she moved over to the panel and hit the send button. "Chakotay... I'm here..." she coughed, throat raw from all the smoke. "Where...?"
"We're in orbit, Captain," Chakotay reassured her. "We can't beam you up at the moment, our transporters were damaged when we were attacked. I'm sending a team down in a shuttle. How's Lieutenant Paris? Does he still need medical help?"
"God, Chakotay, he's dead..." she realised afresh. "He needs help... perhaps the Doctor..."
"I'll send the Doctor down with the Away Team," Chakotay promised her. "I'm leaving the channel open. Tuvok's just launched the shuttle."
"I'll wait..." she coughed.
"Are you all right, Captain?" Chakotay asked, a worried tone in his voice belaying his fear that she might also be seriously injured.
"Fine," she coughed.
"You'd say that if you'd had your legs torn off-"
"-By a Trakian Beast," Captain Janeway finished. "I can see the shuttle," she said, changing the subject. "It's just landing."
The away team, consisting of Tuvok, The Doctor and Harry Kim, entered the shuttle through one of the breaches in the hull. Harry noticeably winced as he saw the damage. The Doctor drew out his medkit and began running the scanner over Tom Paris' body, shaking his head.
Tuvok moved over to where Janeway was sitting, arms clashed around her knees, trying to calm herself down without much success. He carefully ran the spare medical tricorder over her to see if she was injured. "Captain, are you feeling all right?" Tuvok asked the Captain in a quiet voice.
"I'm fine, Tuvok," she murmured. "What happened to Voyager?"
"The same aliens who attacked you attacked us. They took out our warp drive and our shields before we could chase them away. Lieutenant Torres had to restart the whole system." He frowned. "Captain, we need to get you to sickbay for treatment too."
She nodded numbly as Tuvok helped her up. The Doctor stood as well. "Captain, I'm afraid there's nothing that I can do for Mr Paris any more."
Janeway nodded grimly and brushed her hair out of her eyes with a frown. "Let's get back to Voyager," she said resolutely.
"I don't think we can salvage the Flyer, Captain," Harry reported sadly. "Not even her components are worth anything to us now."
"I understand," Janeway sighed.

B'Elanna was waiting for them in sickbay with a worried expression on her face. "Captain, are you all right? Where's Tom?"
Janeway took B'Elanna's arm and led her aside. "B'Elanna, I'm so sorry, Tom didn't make it," she explained, barely keeping the tears out of her eyes and not out of her voice.
B'Elanna's eyes flashed with disbelief. "He's... dead?" she whispered, leaning on the nearest biobed for support. "Kahless, no..."
"The Doctor did all he could," Janeway offered lamely, pressing a hand to her temple to try and banish the pain. "Tom asked me tell you that he loves you, B'Elanna."
The half-Klingon hit the bed in despair. "Why did this happen?" she asked herself.
"I'm here for you, B'Elanna, remember that," Janeway said. Torres shot her a grateful look before dashing out of sickbay, nearly knocking Chakotay over in the process.
"Tom?" Chakotay asked the Doctor, who nodded.
"There was nothing I could do," he explained with a shrug. "He'd been dead for over two hours when we arrived."
"Two hours?" Janeway repeated disbelievingly.
The Doctor ran a medical tricorder over her. "You're not exactly in good shape yourself, Captain. Shock, concussion, burns, bleeding... the list goes on."
Chakotay frowned at her. "You're 'fine'?" he asked with a raised eyebrow. Janeway held up a hand. "I'm not in the mood, Chakotay. Just go away."
Chakotay looked at her for a moment, obviously trying to decide whether he should go or not. Go won, and a moment later he left the sickbay the same way Torres had a moment ago.
The Doctor indicated the biobed. "Up you get, Captain. Let's see if we can’t have you back to normal so you can go off and act recklessly again."

Stepping onto the bridge the next morning, Janeway felt back to normal again. Her injuries had been healed, her concussion and shock treated, and she'd had a decent sleep for once, brought on by the sedatives the Doctor had administered. The only thing wrong was Paris' absence from the helm. Something was missing from the bridge without him there.
"Ensign Baytart, present heading?" she asked as she came down to her command chair.
"We just beamed up the Delta Flyer, Captain," Baytart reported. "We've resumed our course towards the Alpha Quadrant."
"Good," she nodded, and sat down in the chair. They still had the memorial service to go, which would be held this afternoon in the mess hall, which Janeway hoped she would be able to make it through. "Harry, scan for the nearest suitable star."
"Aye Captain," Harry said softly. She smiled supportively at him, and he managed a weak smile in return. Janeway sighed. She knew that Tom and Harry had become very good friends over the past five years, and she hated to see Harry like this, but there was nothing she could do. B'Elanna was down in Engineering, with Carey keeping a surreptitious eye on her; Chakotay had decided that in B'Elanna's case, work was probably the best medicine.

There was silence in the mess hall, except for the lone whistle of one crewman. The assembled crew watched as the Delta Flyer, carrying Tom's body, was shot into space, falling into a slowly decaying orbit around the star that Harry had found earlier. Quietly, the crew began to file out, leaving only Janeway, staring out of the porthole at the fiery star, and Chakotay, staring at Janeway, who did not even realise he was there.
"Kathryn," he said softly, startling her slightly.
She pulled her gaze from the porthole and turned to look at him, trying to choke back the tears that she felt coming again. "Chakotay, I can't imagine how B'Elanna feels," she sighed. "Tom wanted her to know how much he loved her. I wish he could have said it to her one last time..."
"B'Elanna knows. It's the strength of that love that will get her through this, Kathryn," Chakotay said softly. "B'Elanna will learn to cope eventually."
"I just keep seeing him there...dying...it reminds me of my father...Chakotay, I can't stand it," she whispered.
Chakotay put his arms around her for a moment and held her close. "It'll be all right," he assured her.
"He wanted me to tell you something, Chakotay," she began.
"What was that?" Chakotay asked, not quite sure what to expect. What would Tom want to tell him?
"He wanted me to tell you... that I love you," she admitted, looking back out at the solar system they were in, as the Flyer shone with light from the sun.
"He what?" Chakotay asked, wondering if he had heard right.
"He wants us to be happy, Chakotay. He made me promise to tell you."
"I've always known."
"But saying it is different," she said, distressed. "I can't ignore it anymore. What do I do?"
He turned her to face him, wanting her full attention on him, and him alone. "Kathryn, whatever we do, we do it together," Chakotay promised. "I don’t want to lose you. Not to death, not to someone else, not to anything. I've waited so long."
"I wanted to tell you, but I never could," she told him. "I was so afraid... that something like this could happen to us. I've never been lucky in love, Chakotay. First Justin, then Mark... I don't want to lose you too."
"'It is better to have loved than lost, than never to have loved at all'," Chakotay quoted with a sad smile. "B'Elanna will understand that; I understand that."
"I think I understand too," she smiled sadly.
And, as one life ended, a new love was born...

End