Message (PG-13)
A. Kite
Jan. 1999
Then Tom noticed a padd peeking out from under the console. Hmmm... wonder where this came from? He picked it up and saw there was an active file on it. He went over to the Ops station to download it. Tom was surprised to see that the file was encoded to him, but got an even bigger one when he saw the figure on the screen.
Gods, it was Harry. But not any Harry he knew. This one had long hair touched with gray and a hard, bitter air about him. Also missing was the uniform. This Harry was in civilian clothes. The message had begun playing while Tom was busy looking. He had to run it back to the start. Tom noted that the Harry on the screen was sitting right where he was now. On the Delta Flyer, at Ops, strange.
"Hi, Tom. I've missed you, buddy, but if you're seeing this now the last fifteen years will have been worthwhile.
"I can't believe we are finally on the way, headed for the Takara system." Harry gave a brittle smile, "Can you imagine? Harry Kim, outlaw fugitive, with two counts of high treason and one count of conspiracy to break the temporal prime directive against him. Now I know how you felt after Caldik Prime, only I have 150 deaths on my conscious."
No, Tom couldn't imagine the Harry that he knew committing crimes of any sort. But this one, this Harry looked perfectly capable of it. Tom brought his attention back to the screen.
"You know Tom, Chakotay and I were together the first few months after we got back. I was going to say we were lovers; we weren't really. The sex was great, but I broke it off when I realized he wanted more than I had to give him. He wanted my heart, my love. I didn't have them to give." Harry bent his head and mumbled, "I left my heart there with you."
The image looked up again, "I was going to tell you that night when we left the celebration. Then you found the phase variance, and that was that. There wasn't time." Harry snorted and repeated, "Time. I spent every minute possible of the last fifteen years trying to get back to you. The gods only know if this will work, and the devil knows what will happen if we're caught.
"I'm leaving this padd in a place that I'm sure only you would find it. I'm hoping that the fates will let you do that. Tom, please, go talk to me. If you can't love me, at least continue being my friend. I need you. I never realized how much until it was too late."
The screen faded leaving a stunned Tom Paris staring in utter shock. Harry and Chakotay? He was still trying to wrap his brain around that one. Unbidden, the image of gold and bronze moving together came to him. Tom pushed the image away. He didn't want to think about it.
Neither did Tom want to think of the headache he'd get trying to figure out the paradox of actually finding this message. He understood why it wasn't left the same way as Harry's message to himself was. Imagine the captain watching this one before she passed it along.
Tom rose and went through the checks he had come aboard to do. There was surprisingly little damage done. One part of his mind was on his work, the rest of it was trying to make sense of what he'd seen. He had loved Harry for so long that Tom couldn't rightly remember when it had started. It seemed incomprehensible that Harry felt the same way and had never told his best friend. They had always been close; right from the start. They had shared so much joy, pain... Why not love?
Tom knew why he had never taken that final step with his young friend, but why hadn't Harry? Possibly for some of the same reasons that Tom hadn't. Mainly, that he didn't want to wreck their friendship. If things didn't work out between them, how could he possibly stay on Voyager and not be with Harry? Not sit in one another's quarters and talk to all hours of the night? Not eat their meals, such as they were, together? It would cause all sorts of trouble not to be able to work together.
Trouble, that's why he had never moved beyond friendship with Harry. He thought it would only cause trouble. Tom didn't want to ruin the best friendship he had ever had for something that may well be unobtainable. Now he knew that Harry had been going to take that final step. Maybe he thought it might be worth any trouble it caused.
The pilot pushed his way out from under the console he had been rewiring. He needed to go talk to Harry. Gods! Fifteen years. Fifteen years the Harry that would never be had worked to get things back as they should be. Tom wanted to give those years back to his friend, but first he had to talk to him. Tell him.
Tom left the Delta Flyer and headed for Harry's quarters.
End