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When Tom crossed the threshold for the second time, his reality broke.
He wasn't in his right mind as it was, the mutation had already gone really far, but the moment of clarity at the stillpoint of Warp 10 was the same as the first time, seeing himself, seeing everyone, being everywhere at once - until - it was different. It opened up. It unfolded in Tom's face like an atom being cracked open, and the reaction was a mushroom cloud the size of the universe.
But it wasn't friction, or fission, or any other molecular violence. It was just knowledge. It was a fucking apple.
It was this:
Tom wasn't real.
And not just Tom. And not just everyone aboard Voyager, everyone in the quadrant, everyone in any quadrant. All of the places and people and everything he saw at the stillpoint. Turn it over, and it was all paper.
Not real. Made up.
A whole made-up universe. A bunch of stories, for entertainment.
All of the things Tom remembered, his whole shitty life. Entertainment.
His face, his voice, his body weren't his. An actor played him. A human. A real person. Tom even knew what his name was. Not that it mattered. Tom was not a real person.
Tom kept going through the motions, but now he was the one acting. Still, he was pretty good at that, because it was in his character.
INT. STARSHIP VOYAGER BRIDGE - DAY
The crew are in their customary places. At the helm, LT. TOM PARIS looks haunted by forbidden knowledge, but keeps it to himself.
He could act up, talk back, do any crazy thing that popped into his head, but what difference would it make? Could Tom even do anything that was… off script? He was almost afraid to try it, because maybe he would find that he couldn't just do anything he wanted. And if he found that out, found himself truly on rails, imprisoned - He didn't want to know that.
But Tom already knew too much. He was the only one who knew, who could know. And it was lonely.
He couldn't avoid Harry forever.
He can't avoid Harry forever.
"Are you okay? You've been different ever since the threshold," Harry says.
Something… is … different, now. Tom can feel the tense change from past to present. Like jerking awake from a dream. Does it mean something? He looks into Harry's familiar face, sincere and worried about Tom and it hurts like hell to know that Harry's not real either.
"Talk to me," Harry pleads.
Is this in the script? Tom wonders. Or can I change things?
Can I ever change anything?
"Is it - " Harry starts, and stops, and starts again. "I was wondering. Is it about the children?"
"The what …?" In the moment, Tom does not have the slightest idea what Harry is talking about.
"I thought - maybe it was about the children, that you felt bad about leaving them behind." Absolute sincerity, and so decent of Harry. But of course: it's in his character.
The children. He means the baby salamanders! Harry thinks - Jesus, it's too much. Tom laughs loud and hard, but it's not feel-good laughter. It's ugly. Harry stares at him.
Tom doesn't like to have Harry looking at him like that. "They're not even real!"
But now Harry is about to ask What do you mean, and Tom doesn't want to tell him what he means, he doesn't want to have to explain - to try to explain, and won't Tom just sound crazy to someone who didn't see it all for himself? Harry will just think it's some kind of celerity-induced psychosis, the kind of syndrome that would be named after Tom in the future, if there were a real future, if it weren't all just a story.
"I'm sorry," Tom says. "I - didn't mean that."
Just like that, Harry's face changes, warmth and sympathy flowing back in to replace worry and doubt. Tom can read it on him like words on a page. Whew, that's more like the Tom I know.
Yeah. He's a reasonable facsimile of himself.
Can I change anything? What if I just -
"Something's - happened to you," Harry says.
Harry is too smart, he might figure something out, and then he will never let it go until he understands. If he understands, it'll break him too. Tom has to make him stop asking. If only there could be a red alert!
Harry is standing very close. Harry is looking into Tom's eyes, concerned and always, always thinking. Maybe even…outside the box.
Tom is desperate. He has to make his own red alert, right now.
He puts his hands on Harry's shoulders.
Tom makes it really, really clear what he is going to do, looking at Harry's mouth as he slowly leans in.
This will do it. Harry will be repulsed, and then he'll leave Tom alone and stop asking questions.
When their mouths meet, Tom is the one who is shocked. Harry was supposed to pull away once he realized - but he didn't realize in time?
For the first few moments Harry seems frozen, passive. His lips are parted from the get-go so there is no transition from closed mouth to open.
Then Harry's hands come to life and grab Tom, and Tom thinks There it is, and prepares to be shoved back. Prepares to put a mask of What's the big deal? on his face in preparation for being hit. Tries to prepare to see all that warmth and sympathy drain away forever.
But Harry has always found ways to surprise Tom.
Tom does get pushed back just a little, but only because Harry steps in and leans up against him. Their combined center of balance shifts. But the kiss continues.
Tom has been with a few men here and there. His first kiss was another guy. But that's a long time ago now. And this is Harry.
Harry is already special.
But - ! The realization is like a jolt of electricity along Tom's spine. Wait, wait! This -
This is not in the script!
Tom knows that! He has seen what his future is supposed to be: B'Elanna, marriage, a child. It's written, and in Tom's future his actor will have played out all these things. It already exists. It's the story.
But they can change things.
Tom isn't sure he could have done it by himself. But thanks to Harry he knows: they can change things. They have free will!
What had been somewhat tentative kissing on Tom's part, in expectation of being rejected, turns serious, then. Now he's all in.
They're changing things. It's exhiliarating!
Harry says something that it takes Tom's brain a second to parse. He is already nodding when the words come clear. "Do you wanna take this to the bed?"
Wow, Harry, and here I always thought you'd be -
Wait.
Always thought?
They stagger to Harry's bed.
'Always' might be overselling it, but when Tom has thought about it,
(and it has been thought about more than once,)
…he has imagined Harry would be more on the innocent side, that he could still be shocked, that he might be - y'know - yielding.
Tom's imagination has not reckoned on Harry's intensity in all things.
Even in the things Harry does just for fun, he does them all the way. When he took up kal-toh he was playing it for weeks on end.
Tom has always tended toward a little playfulness in bed. But Harry is dead fucking serious. And he's really fucking strong.
There's awkwardness, there are assumptions, there is negotiation. Tom is the one who ends up - y'know - yielding.
Don't get Tom wrong. He does like it. It's just different. That's a good thing. It's not what Tom expected, because it's not in the script.
Harry makes Tom forget all about the script, for a while.
Hours later they're tired and cuddling and here's that sweetness that Tom fantasized about. With that intense energy discharged, Harry is more relaxed than Tom has ever seen him. And physically affectionate.
"I guess we need to keep this secret," Harry says in a regretful tone. His hands are drifting over Tom's shoulders and the back of his neck, kneading gently here and there.
Tom thinks over the last hours and the noises he has been making.
"No," he says. "I don't want us to hide."
Harry's hands go still and his face changes, a little startled, and then - that shy smile is so perfect that it lodges in Tom's heart and touches off a chain reaction. A matter-bending wave.
As usual, Tom's original motivation is not the best. He is trying to force them off script, and make the so-called canon story impossible. He is using Harry, just like in the very beginning of their story, coming to his rescue in the station bar, already knowing who Harry was and seizing the opportunity to suck up to someone favored by the captain.
But also as usual, Harry effortlessly counteracts Tom's selfishness and makes him better.
The feeling opens like a water lily atop a murky pond.
"Please don't stop," Tom says, meaning the shoulder and neck rubs. "It feels fucking amazing."
Harry bites his lip and gives Tom what Tom will come to think of as The Look. He resumes rubbing, but a little less gently.
"I fucking love hearing you swear," Harry says.
Tom knows why. Hearing Harry do it gives him a thrill of transgression, too, because the story they're in doesn't allow language like that.
***
Tom feels vaguely disappointed by the lack of any pushback or even much surprise when people find out about them being together.
Even B'Elanna is happy for them!
It's - weird. A little unsettling, even. Tom feels like a bit of a dick for even questioning it. They DO make an awesome couple, thank you very much. Adorable even, if you insist. (Some do.)
But it's unusual, and only Tom knows why: it's a twentieth-century problem.
Of course, the only reason Tom knows so much about the twentieth century in the first place is to make things easier for the twentieth-century writers and audience. To provide context and familiarity. But it seems pretty ridiculous for them to set the story hundreds of years in the future, yet still only ever depict 1:1 hetero pairings.
Still, it is the twenty-fourth century now. And it’s not like they act that much different… in public.
For a while, a good long while, it's good. It's great. Tom has had a few lovers in his life who sought to change him in this way or that, but Harry just does it without even trying. He doesn't even know.
One day out of nowhere, Harry says to Tom, "Are you ever gonna tell me?"
Tom thinks Harry is talking about 'love.' "You know how I feel," he starts to say, intending to tell him about the water lily, but Harry shakes his head.
"I don't mean that. I mean that time when I asked you about the children."
The word, the reference to that moment, squeezes Tom's heart like a fist.
"You've been different since the threshold. I said that then, and it's still true. The thing bothering you - it wasn't this. It wasn't us. It's something else and it's still weighing on you. Like a burden you're carrying all the time."
What can Tom say? He can try to keep denying it, but the thing Harry is most intense about, not counting sex, is solving problems. And Tom has already played the ace up his sleeve.
"Am I right?" Harry prompts.
"Yeah," Tom says. He means to say it neutrally, to sound calm, but he's not calm.
"I have another question about that time. Chakotay and Tuvok brought you and the captain back… brought you to sickbay, and a day later, the both of you were fine. Human again, no after effects, like nothing ever happened. The both of you even got your hair back. How?"
Tom knows there is no answer to this question. The writers of the story might know, but time and resources are limited. They just skip over that part, or cut it because the audience won't care about that as much as the painfully awkward exchange between himself and Janeway about whose cloaca did what.
"I know you don't know," Harry says. "Nobody knows. It's not in the log. The doctor glitches when it comes up. And it wasn't a transporter pattern replacement either. I checked everything."
Tom shakes his head. What is he supposed to say?
"And you said, the children 'aren't even real.' You tried to walk that back, but you meant it."
"Please stop," Tom pleads. "Stop asking. You don't wanna know. Believe me."
"I'm supposed to just - let you carry this burden all by yourself?"
"Yes. You carrying it too won't make it any less. It'll just make it worse."
"But maybe I can help," and they're both pleading with each other, it's like the opposite of a fight.
If anyone could help, it would be Harry.
But Harry isn't real.
Tom puts his hands over his face. Despair is compounded by humiliation as he is wracked with sobs so intense it's like years have been torn away, stripping down to the raw nerves of adolescence.
Harry is sitting beside him, Tom is dimly aware. His hand is on Tom's shoulder.
"I don't want you to know this. I don't want you to feel like this." The words are mangled, bubbling with misery.
"Let me tell you what I do know," Harry says.
His voice is so calm it stops Tom's tears in their tracks.
"When you reached Warp 10, you reported seeing 'everything, everywhere,'" Harry says. "That was after the first time. But you went through it again, didn't you? That's when you picked up this burden you're carrying."
Tom says nothing. But he's listening.
"The captain is fine, because she only went through it once," Harry says. "So when you saw everything again, there must have been something else. Was it the end of the universe?"
It is not a bad guess at all. But it's still wrong. Tom shakes his head and sniffs loudly.
"Okay. I wanted to rule that out," Harry says. His hand has moved from Tom's shoulder to slowly, gently rubbing his back.
"Harry - "
"Let me finish, okay? If it's not that, then it must be even bigger. Something - existential."
Can Harry really deduce this paper universe from the inside?
"It's not just how you and the captain recovered. I've noticed more than one thing that defies rational explanation," Harry says. "Things that are awfully convenient… and statistically improbable. Things we take for granted. But objectively they don't add up."
Plot holes, thinks Tom. So many plot holes.
"Sometimes it feels like we're living in a story," Harry says.
Tom lifts his head and meets his eyes.
He can't even breathe. He's not sure his heart is beating. It's the stillpoint again, without the benefit of warp 10.
"Right?" says Harry.
Slowly, unwillingly, Tom nods once. It's a fragile moment filled to bursting with tension.
Harry looks worried, maybe a little scared. But he doesn't look broken.
Maybe it all depends on how you find it out. Tom has had the knowledge thrust on him all at once. Harry has acquired it himself, clue by clue.
"But why did you say they aren't real?" Harry says, and suddenly Tom wonders, with a chill, wait, does Harry not understand after all? Is he stuck in a loop?
"They're not," Tom says. "We're not. Nothing is." At Harry's dubious look, he raises his voice. "Don't you get it? You just said we're in a story!"
"That doesn't mean we aren't real," Harry says.
"What are you talking about?" Tom is more upset by Harry's calm than he would have been by a freakout. "You didn't see it! I saw it! It's not just us, it's not just everyone we've ever known, it's our whole universe. This isn't theoretical, Harry! Voyager is made up. It's just an entertainment vid. Starfleet, the whole Federation, all of it is a fucking fiction. That's all we are. We are not real."
"You're right that I didn't see it. Tell me everything you can about what you saw."
Tom catches his breath, and then words and phrases spew out in no particular order. There's too much to convey any of it sensibly. As Tom flings out disconnected thoughts, Harry listens in silence, collecting and memorizing and making connections.
"What you're telling me kind of supports my point," Harry says after a while, when Tom's voice is tired.
"How?"
"Well, it's more than a story. It's a lot of interconnected stories, originating with one person, but made by many. And known by many, many more. I mean… how is this any less a viable life form than one of those nebulas that spontaneously gain sentience? Maybe it's a constructed universe but we're living in it.
How do you know that?
We're able to talk about it. We're able to divert from that story you saw.
But isn't it still just a story? We're off script, but it could be something… made by someone who knows the story. What do you call that?
Pastiche, I think. But that's still supporting my point, Tom. Isn't it? We're here, thinking and talking and being. And we can do what we want.
Hey, there's something I have to tell you.
Okay, tell me.
When I kissed you. It was - I didn't - I mean now I do, but until we actually started I wasn't -
Yeah, I know. Me either.
...
I could tell exactly what you were doing. You're really transparent, you know. You wanted me to stop asking questions. You thought I'd run away. Or take a swing at you. Or something. Right?
...
I could see all that on your face, Tom. So I wondered what you'd do if I didn't run away. If I kissed back. I mean, obviously I wasn't gonna stop asking questions no matter what you did. And I was curious what would happen, too.
So neither of us meant it.
I mean it now.
Yeah. Me too.
***
An hour or two later, Tom felt the tense change back and if it meant anything, he no longer worried much about it. Despite what he'd said, it did feel better to share the burden. Harry was still not broken: if anything, he was happy to find little ways to push the envelope, test their 'plot armor.'
"Don't get too crazy," Tom said. Harry died a lot of times in their story and he always came back, but that didn't make it any easier to cope with. Especially now.
Harry was clever and inventive. He thought up a whole menu of experiments to try. Tom’s life became a rollercoaster of surprises, by day and by night. It was like when he first started playing with writing holoprograms, only now the playground was the whole world around them.
That was by day. By night, the focus narrowed to the bed.
But eventually they pushed it too far and reality began to distort. They had both Kes and Seven of Nine living aboard at the same time, and they became close friends. Chakotay and B'Elanna became an item. Tuvix was created anew, and this time they found a way to save all three.
The rest of the crew alternated between accepting everything as though it were a dream, or making remarks about events from their future that they shouldn't know.
The captain seemed fine, until one day they got to the bridge and she looked like someone else, a woman who spoke softly and quickly fled to the ready room. When she came out again, she was their familiar captain, but wearing an old hairstyle.
"I'll handle this," she said to no one in particular.
"Warning," said the main computer, but didn't elaborate what it was warning about.
Tom and Harry traded a look, then slipped off the bridge.
"This is getting out of hand."
"I know," Harry said somberly. "It's gotten into everything. We have to stop it."
'It' was the knowledge. The apple.
"I don't think I can forget what I know."
"Maybe not completely. But we need to contain it somehow."
The holodeck. Its capabilities were fluid, according to the needs of any given story. And Tom was written to be skilled with design.
He knew it was going to become part of the story, in their future, but he hadn't known exactly why. Now it was clear. It was perfect: a story within a story, safely contained, and protected by canon.
The Adventures of Captain Proton.
Tom was almost gleeful as he designed it. The costumes, the sets, the props. The cheap looking cave sets. The monochrome! It was perfect. The apple was hidden in plain sight. So was the water lily.
They could return their timeline to normal, let the story flow unimpeded. And anytime they wanted, when they were in that story within a story, they knew everything. They had free will. They went off script.
As the story continues to be seen, and the stories within the story continue to be told, they still do. Whenever they want.
They're real.
You know that. Right?