(no subject)
Title: “Present Tense”
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Characters/Pairings: Tom Paris/Harry Kim; Crew
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Word Count: c. 4,000
Warnings: Language, angst, descriptions of murder victim, sort-of character death
Beta: Many, many thanks to Leena for the quick beta job.
Summary: After the events of “Deadlock,” Tom and Harry struggle with the implications of their respective deaths--and resurrections.
Harry doesn’t feel anything when Captain Janeway announces that she’s going to set the auto-destruct sequence. The moment the other Voyager was discovered he knew one of the ships was doomed, one way or another, and when the Vidiians stepped onto their Voyager he knew it would be them. He doesn’t much relish the thought of having his organs harvested, and so her decision comes almost as a relief.
But when she tells the other Janeway, “I’m sending you Harry Kim,” he looks up in alarm.
His first thought is Tom, but he’s wise enough not to say the name.
“Captain -” he tries to protest instead, but she cuts him off, and doesn’t even spare him a glance.
“Go.”
He makes it to Sickbay with hardly a memory of his feet taking him there, and emerges with Samantha Wildman’s baby nestled in the crook of his arm. He makes for the breach, darting down corridors that are filled with fallen crewmembers.
Tom’s body is the last he comes across on that hellish journey to the breach, and it is so absurd that Harry lets out a wild laugh that quickly turns into a whimper. He ducks around a corner and bites down on the base of his thumb, sinking sharp teeth into soft flesh in order to stifle the noise, because Tom’s corpse isn’t alone. The Vidiians aren’t even waiting to transport their kills back to their ship before harvesting the organs--they’ve already split open Tom’s torso and are lifting out his organs, one by one, putting them in special cases that they’ve brought along with them.
Harry can’t even stop by Tom’s body long enough to say goodbye.
He would have liked to at least close Tom’s eyes.
He’ll have to settle for the knowledge that, somewhere he can’t yet see, Tom is still alive.
It isn’t enough.
----
Tom doesn’t go down to meet Harry when he steps through the breach, seconds before Voyager’s duplicate meets a fiery end.
He tells himself that it’s because he’s tending to wounded in the Mess Hall, and for the most part this is true.
But there is only so much he can do for Voyager’s wounded, especially once the Doctor’s program stabilizes, and it is a poor excuse.
It is an excuse all the same, and one that he hides behind for most of the day, because just three hours ago he had heard his lover’s name announced among the dead.
And now, Harry is back on board, which alone is enough to make everyone else forget that his body is also floating just outside the ship.
Everyone except Tom, that is.
----
Harry stands with his hands clasped in front of him, giving a smile that he hopes is genuine while Samantha Wildman thanks him for bringing her baby to Voyager.
He says, “Thank the Doc,” and means, That isn’t your baby. Don’t give me credit for this atrocity.
He tries to explain it to the captain afterwards, because they are all so nonchalant; so unconcerned about the fact that one hundred and fifty people just went to their deaths.
One hundred forty-eight.
I didn’t ask for this.
But all that comes out is weird, and that makes Janeway laugh.
“‘Weird’ is part of the job,” she says, cheerful, and puts a friendly hand on his shoulder.
He wants to scream, and smiles instead.
---
His quarters are a disaster.
To be fair, the entire ship is in chaos, with hull breaches on more decks than not and dim emergency lights illuminating nearly every corridor. The ship’s small morgue is quickly overwhelmed, and the dead are moved to Sickbay while the Mess Hall is turned into a makeshift medical bay.
And Tom’s shirt is sitting on Harry’s couch.
It’s right where Tom discarded it this morning as he breezed through the room, tossing off his sleep clothes and grabbing the various bits of his uniform from where they had been scattered the night before. Late or not, he always moved as though he was in a hurry, flitting from one activity to the next as though being idle was detrimental to his health.
Is, Harry corrects mentally. Present tense.
Tom is alive.
“You’re dead.”
Harry whirls on the spot. Transfixed as he was by the sight of his not-dead lover’s shirt, he hadn’t noticed the doors to quarters slide open and Tom step through.
“So are you,” Harry croaks, his throat thick with smoke and dust. Relief and nauseating grief tug at his chest at the sight of the man who, just hours ago, had been dead. Tom looks worse for wear, but mostly uninjured. There is grime in his hair and down the front of his uniform, and there’s a cut above his left eye, but otherwise he appears to be fine.
Physically, at least.
“What got me?” Tom asks, going for light-hearted and missing by a mile. His voice sounds as tight as Harry’s throat.
“Vidiians,” Harry says. “Me?”
“Hull breach. B’Elanna watched you die.” Tom walks over to the couch and picks up his shirt. He’s pointedly not looking at Harry when he says, “Just came for this. For the best, you know?”
“Yeah,” Harry mutters. “See you later, then?”
Tom nods, and they both know he is lying.
----
Everything goes back to normal almost immediately.
No. That’s not quite right.
Life goes on, with hardly an interruption in routine; with barely an acknowledgement for the lives that were lost and the ship that was destroyed.
Harry dies, and Tom doesn’t even have a chance to grieve before he’s back again.
Tom had been on the bridge when B’Elanna’s frantic call came through, her curt Harry’s dead ringing in his ears long after she had signed off and everything else had gone to hell. The bridge had been evacuated, the crew relocated, and the duplicate Voyager discovered almost immediately after. There wasn’t time to grieve, not with hull breaches opening up all over the ship and people dying with every proton burst.
The first time Tom had stopped for breath, Harry’s duplicate and the baby had already been on board for two hours.
The first time he saw Harry, six hours had passed since his death.
He had gathered his shirt and slipped away, wanting to escape.
But the escape is almost worse than being around his lover’s duplicate, because no one else acknowledges the loss. Harry returns to bridge duty at once, and everyone speaks as though he is the real Harry, the true Harry.
And he is, in a way. Tom knows that.
He’s the same Harry that Tom took to bed countless times before the accident; he’s the same Harry who had woken next to him the morning of that awful day.
But he’s not the same Harry who died trying to repair their crippled ship. He didn’t endure those hellish three hours with them; he has no idea what it was like.
And he’s not the same Harry who is now lying on a biobed in the makeshift morgue, his lips blue and skin an ashen white, the erupted veins along his forehead and neck serving as evidence of his exposure to the vacuum of space.
The Doctor, to his credit, doesn’t ask why Tom is here, as though he has no right to be now that the other Harry has been brought on board.
He also doesn’t call Tom’s grief to attention, for which Tom is distinctly grateful. He sits in his office for a time, acknowledging Tom’s presence with a nod and then giving him some minutes of privacy.
“Mr. Paris,” he says eventually, coming up behind Tom and handing him a PADD. “I told the captain I would put the injuries report in hard copy for her. See that it’s delivered, would you?”
Tom nods, his eyes still on Harry, and the Doctor leaves.
“Rough ride, Harry?” Tom tries to joke. He touches Harry’s cold brow, and his flesh is so frigid that Tom draws back quickly, as though he has been burned. “Must’ve hurt. I can’t imagine...”
He trails off, and then says, “He’s... You’re back. And everyone’s forgotten... that you’re here, too. That you died. In agony.
“But I won’t, all right? I promise.”
----
The first person to stop and ask Harry if he’s all right is Kes.
He gives a smile he knows she doesn’t believe and manages a quip that would make Tom proud.
His Tom, at least.
She doesn’t ask again.
----
Days pass.
They all still take their breakfasts together in the Mess Hall, and to the outside observer it would appear as though nothing has changed. Tom and B’Elanna sit across from one another, as is their usual custom, and Harry sits at Tom’s side.
Before the accident, sometimes their knees would brush under the table, or Tom would pick bits of food off of Harry’s plate and eat them. Neither of them was particularly demonstrative in public, but sometimes Tom would even squeeze Harry’s hand before departing for his shift.
All that has changed, now. Tom is maddeningly polite, but most of his conversation is directed at B’Elanna. He holds himself stiffly, his body angled away from Harry’s, and there’s a good six inches between them.
It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. Tom has a point, Harry knows that he does. It’s odd, having their roles reversed; having Tom be the rational one while Harry feels as though he’s been left adrift, all of his reactions based on emotion and none on thought. But he isn’t the Harry who died on this ship, no more than Tom is the one who died on his own.
They aren’t the same.
Days ago, they were.
Harry shakes his head. It’s almost too much to wrap his head around, sometimes.
Beside him, Tom laughs at something B’Elanna has said. Harry feels a twinge. Not all that long ago, that laugh would have been directed at him.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, interrupting them. “Late for my shift. Gotta run.”
He isn’t, and Tom knows it. He gathers his tray and leaves, all the same.
Tom doesn’t stop him.
Tom watches Harry leave. He knows that stance; that tightness around his mouth and the appearance of tiny lines at the corner of his eyes. Harry is holding himself very carefully in check, and it’s taking every last shred of his willpower to hold on to his composure.
Something pricks Tom’s skin, and he starts violently. B’Elanna is staring at him with an odd look on her face, her fork poised just over his hand.
“Flyboy,” she says. “You in there?”
“Yeah,” Tom says, shaking his head. “Yeah, sorry, what were you saying?”
B’Elanna stabs at a piece of meat. “What were you thinking about?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Neither is that.” B’Elanna points at him with her fork. “You’re thinking about him, right? Harry. Oh, don’t look like that. Everyone knows about you two.”
“Not much to know about, anymore,” Tom mutters.
“He’s still Harry.”
“Yes,” Tom agrees, “and he isn’t. He died.”
A brief shadow passes over B’Elanna’s face.
“I know, I was there,” she says sharply.
“I wasn’t.” Tom lowers his eyes to his food. “I should have been.”
“Look, Flyboy -”
“I wish he’d stayed that way.”
The words are out before Tom realizes what he’s said, and he takes a quick glance around the room. The Mess is nearly empty, and no one is sitting by them. When he looks back at B’Elanna, her lips are slightly parted; her eyes wide.
“Sorry?” she hisses. “You what? Why?”
Tom picks morosely at his food for a moment.
“Because,” he says at last, “then I would have a reason for feeling this way. And I wouldn’t be alone. Everyone else would be grieving with me.”
“Tom -”
“For fuck’s sake, B’Elanna!” he bursts out finally, interrupting her again. “We recovered his body! It’s in the morgue, I saw it. And everyone seems to forget that, because by a fluke of technology there are two of them.”
He sets down his fork abruptly and pushes back from the table.
“Sorry, I should go.”
He leaves without looking back.
----
Three hours are what make all the difference.
Harry is at his post on the bridge, analyzing data from a nebula that they passed three light-years ago. It is hardly interesting enough to merit more than a passing note in the ship’s logs, and while it provides him with some work, it isn’t enough to keep his thoughts from straying.
Three hours.
That’s all that separates him from Tom. Three hours’ worth of differing memories from two Voyagers. All it took was three hours to destroy everything they had been trying to build these past few months, and it isn’t fair.
The Tom who had woken next to him a week ago is the Tom who sits at the conn now, and Harry spends a moment staring at the back of Tom’s sandy head before Tuvok glances in his direction and he quickly turns his eyes back to his work.
He’s also the Tom whose body lay broken and bleeding on deck twelve just eight days ago.
And Harry himself... well, he is both the Harry who is standing here now and the Harry who met his death in the vacuum of space last week.
All it took was three hours to change everything... and nothing.
It isn’t fair.
----
There are two hours to go before he’s supposed to go on duty, and Tom is at Sandrine’s.
He’s been there for hours, using up most of his month’s holodeck rations in one night because his dreams are haunted by the screams of a man he never saw die, and in his waking moments he is reminded that Harry is sleeping on the same deck, just a few doors down from his own.
“I wasn’t perfect.”
Tom knocks back the rest of his drink in one go. He places the empty glass on the bar and taps the rim; the holographic bartender refills it with alcohol from Tom’s own stores, real liquor that he smuggled onto Voyager just before she left Deep Space Nine two years ago.
“No one is, Tommy,” Sandrine says soothingly, but he isn’t in the mood to be comforted tonight.
“I lied,” he goes on. “I covered up my crimes, for as long as I was able to get away with it. I slept with strangers for money; I sold my skills as a pilot to the highest bidder. I joined the Maquis to get back at my father, not because I believed in the cause. People have died because of me, and I’m sure more will in the future.”
He drinks, and then slams his glass down onto the bar.
“But what,” he says in a low voice, “did I do that was so terrible--so unforgivable--that it warranted this? Him?”
“I don’t understand,” Sandrine says calmly.
“The universe gave me everything,” Tom says softly, “and then it took it all back. And then, because that wasn’t enough, the universe returned him to me. But it’s not really him. It is, and it isn’t.”
“He is Harry, no?” Sandrine flashes him a kind smile as she pulls a rag from her apron and begins to wipe down the bar. “He is Harry Kim?”
“Sort of.”
“Is he not the Harry Kim you met your first day on the ship?” she goes on. “The same one you kissed for the first time in your Captain Proton program--yes, I know about that, Tommy. People do talk, you know.”
“He is,” Tom says to his glass.
“He is the Harry who eats breakfast with you in the Mess Hall each morning, and the one who has shared your bed at night. That has not changed.”
Tom nods wordlessly to himself, because what no one else seems to realize is that it doesn’t matter what they shared.
All that matters is those three hours, because the Harry who is here now hadn’t been aboard a dying Voyager, a doomed Voyager.
He hasn’t faced death in the way that Tom’s Harry had.
Neither have you, a voice sings in the back of Tom’s head.
He pushes his glass away and stands.
“Have a shift,” he mutters in Sandrine’s general direction. “Gotta run.”
He does just that, before she can say anything in reply.
----
Harry is just going on duty as Tom is coming off, and they meet in passing in the Mess Hall. Tom looks as though he’s been on the bridge for eighteen hours, not eight, and his Hello is lost in a yawn as Harry approaches the counter to fill his plate with food.
“Rough shift?” Harry asks, and Tom waves away his concern. He takes a long swallow of the steaming liquid and moves away, making to leave the room.
It is too much.
“You know, it wouldn’t kill you to talk to me!” Harry snaps. He slams his tray down on the counter, and the entire room goes silent.
Out of everyone on this ship, only Tom is treating him as though he’s an outsider, and it is infuriating. The one person whose opinion Harry valued most is treating him the way he thinks he ought to be treated, and it grates on his nerves. He hates himself for wanting it; he hates Tom for giving it to him.
Tom freezes. His back goes ramrod-straight, and his shoulders snap into a stiff line.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Tom says, quietly, and doesn’t turn around.
“You would to - to Harry.”
Tom turns around, his eyes full of ice.
“You’re not him.”
“I am,” Harry growls, words he doesn’t quite believe spilling from his mouth; words he’s heard from everyone else since the accident. “I am. I’m Harry Kim!”
“I know,” Tom says, still irritatingly calm. “But not m--not our Harry. At best you’re a consolation prize, a lucky man who escaped a doomed ship by pure chance. You don’t belong here.”
He turns to walk away again.
“D’you think this is easy?”
Harry doesn’t realize he’s the one who spoke until heads turn in his direction. And now that he’s started, he finds that he can’t stop.
“D’you think it was easy, walking away? I had five minutes, and I couldn’t take anyone else with me. You were the last thing I saw, you know. Lying in a corridor with your guts spilled out on the floor, two Vidiians harvesting your organs. And--and just that morning you had been in my quarters, drinking coffee. I still have that mug. It’s the same one. But you’re not. Or are you?” Harry throws up his hands. “You tell me, Tom. What is this?”
Tom’s answer comes quickly, and that makes it hurt all the more.
“Nothing.”
He tries to leave again.
“Stop!”
Tom hesitates. Harry, blazing with fury, goes on.
“You aren’t the only one who’s hurting.” The room echoes for a moment with his shout. Tom’s jaw tenses, and Harry plunges on. “Do you get that? It’s not just you! Everyone else may have forgotten, but I haven’t! I walked away from one hundred and fifty people. I took Naomi while her mother lay dying at her side, and I walked away! At least you had a body to mourn. I didn’t even have that.”
“Harry -”
Someone reaches out for his arm, and he jerks away. Tom’s lips are slightly parted, ice-blue eyes overbright with something Harry doesn’t dare hope for.
“You aren’t the only one who’s hurting,” Harry repeats, softer. “But you also aren’t the only one who remembers. I left them, I left you. And you all just... go on. Like nothing ever happened. But I can’t do that. So don’t pretend like you’re the only one.”
Tom drags a tongue across dry lips. The room is quiet and still, and though his next words are whispered, they echo like a shout.
“You died.”
Harry nods.
“So did you.”
He dares to take a step closer. Tom doesn’t back away.
“I’m not the Harry you lost,” Harry ventures, and a muscle in Tom’s cheek leaps, the only visible sign of his flinch. “But... I am the one you had breakfast with on that--that morning. And you died, but you didn’t, and... all right, I don’t get it either. Not really. But... for the love of God, Tom, at least talk to me!”
Tom stares at him for so long that Harry begins to fidget under the harsh gaze, fighting the urge to look away. And then he turns on his heel and walks away.
This time, Harry lets him go.
-----
Strange, orange clouds billow in the sky over the village, buffeted along by a strong breeze. Harry sits on a hill overlooking the small town, a good mile away from it. Blades of tall grass, stirred by the breeze, whip his face and hands.
Tom approaches him from behind, each step sounding like a crash as the parched grass breaks and gives way beneath his feet.
“I thought I locked this program,” Harry says without looking around.
“You did.” Tom sits down beside him and rests his elbows on his knees. Silence stretches between them for several minutes before Tom breaks it again. “Where are we?”
Harry sighs through his nose.
“Either you’re talking to me,” he says, “or you’re not. You don’t get to pick and choose, Tom, it isn’t fair.”
He glances sideways at Tom, and then looks away. “Especially after you’ve been drinking.”
“It was only one drink. Needed to clear my head a bit,” Tom says, voice tinged with defensiveness. “You know me better than that, Harry.”
It’s an age before Harry replies.
“Yeah,” he says softly, shoulders sagging in defeat. “I do know that.”
They lapse into silence again, and Harry begins to wish that Tom would speak or leave. He doesn’t know why Tom is here, and the uncertainty, coming on the heels of Tom’s cutting words in the Mess Hall, is just about all his strained nerves can take.
“I meant what I said back there,” Tom says suddenly. Harry pushes himself to his feet and starts to walk away. “Harry!”
“It’s one thing for you to say that to me in the Mess Hall,” Harry calls over his shoulder. “It’s another for you to seek me out and rub it in my face. That’s cruel, even by your standards.”
Tom scrambles after him, and grabs his elbow.
“No, Harry, listen,” he says, breathless. “I mean--You don’t belong here. You should have died on that ship. But... what I failed to mention is that I am so very glad you didn’t.”
“Are you, now?” Harry snaps, refusing to look at him.
“Yes.” Tom’s voice is quiet. “Look, I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s like... you just had a few memories erased. That’s all.”
Harry tries to tug out of his grip, and fails. He sighs through his nose. “What about you?”
“All right,” Tom says. “So I’m missing a few memories, too. We both are. But I haven’t forgotten the important things. Like the look on your face when I kissed you, that first time, in this very holodeck. Or--or when I tried to make dinner for us once and ended up setting your couch on fire, d’you remember? Bar a few memories, I’m still Tom. Your Tom.”
Harry pulls out of Tom’s grip, and turns around.
“What does that make me, then?” he asks, because he needs to hear it. There are many things that can go unsaid between them, but this can’t be one of them.
Tom’s expression is unreadable, and he stares for so long that Harry begins to contemplate walking away again.
And then Tom takes Harry’s face in his hands. Harry is so startled that he nearly takes a step back in alarm, but Tom holds him in place. He brushes a thumb over Harry’s lips, his eyes searching Harry’s face.
“Tom...” Harry whispers, the rest of the sentence stalled on the tip of his tongue.
Tom’s eyes are bloodshot from too many nights awake and dark now with what Harry still doesn’t dare name, his pupils so wide they almost eclipse the thin line of blue remaining around them. And then Tom leans in.
The kiss is soft, so gentle at first that Harry has to open his eyes to realize that it’s happening. And then Tom tilts his head, sealing their mouths together. His hands drop from Harry’s face to his hips, and Harry slides his arms around Tom’s neck. His fingers dig into Tom’s shoulders, as though scrabbling for purchase, holding on so neither of them can slip away.
Tom draws back first, and runs fingers over Harry’s saliva-slick lips. His own curve into a smile, the first Harry’s seen in days.
“Harry,” he whispers, pressing their foreheads together. “You’re Harry.”