Summary: Sue has a couple of problems, Harry gets an unpleasant surprise, and Tom puts a few things together. Seven worries and Chakotay gets some vindication.

Archiving: ASC, all others ask

Author Notes: References to POW #8, 9, and 10. Thanks to Kat for Seven's diary entries and for the concept in the first place--she wrote most of them featured here and elsewhere and I owe her big time for that. To my betas--my gratitude for the work you put into this.

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

Lieutenant Joseph Carey, Acting Department Head and hating every minute, discovered something unusual in engineering, on that fine line between beta and gamma shift. Looking at the prosaic reports on the defragmentation of the Delta Flyer's computer core over Commander Chakotay's shoulder, it was something on the order of a revelation. It was a novel discovery, one that he had never expected to make in this lifetime, aboard this ship.

He liked Commander Chakotay.

The dislike had been as comfortable as a pair of old trousers. Coming into being with the appointment of B'Elanna over him as Chief Engineer, his frustration with her promotion had quickly turned--he had a lively sense of self-preservation, after all, and in any case, he'd adapted, as all Starfleet officers should--but Commander Chakotay, who'd sponsored her, was a different story. A lot of it, he admitted to himself, had to do with the limited nature of his association with the Commander--he just didn't know him, and it's temptingly easy, not to mention rather enjoyable, to dislike someone you don't know and have few interactions with.

Especially when you can nurture feelings of being screwed over in the promotion department.

"That's all that's been defragmented?" Chakotay asked sharply, eyes unerringly sorting through the raw data, finding those depressingly low numbers. Almost guiltily, even though he had nothing to do with the defragmentation project, Carey nodded, flicking a few buttons to change the screen to a more organized view of the recovered data. "Damn." One fist came down sharply on the console, startling them both.

"Commander?"

The brown eyes were veiled as they sent him a single glance before flickering back down to the screen.

The dislike wasn't personal--it was hard to be personal with someone who had no real impact on your work, other than the most indirect. Chakotay's descent into engineering had been something of a shock--demanding every report on the explosion, on the ruined tricorder, on the computer core, clutching that list of damning log entries in one hand, eyes straying to it with every new report, trying to make the connections, as apparently Ensign Paris had so quickly only a day before.

But he didn't look too happy about it.

Joe Carey didn't need wonder long why Commander Chakotay was down here, vainly trying to decipher the raw data from defragmentation--rumors of an disagreement between Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay had circulated the ship for almost a day now. It wasn't temporal mechanics to figure out who was on what side--not with Chakotay sweating down in engineering and Captain Janeway meeting regularly with Seven again, after almost a week of cool relations.

Not much of a judgement call there at all.

"How much more can you get today?" His voice was low, tight, vaguely and irrationally bringing up images of a different man from a different ship, dressed in leather, facing Janeway with muted frustration after their release from the Caretaker.

Not the extremely cool, rational, and quiet first officer of a Starfleet vessel.

Old habits died hard, apparently.

"We're currently at two percent a day, Commander," Joe said carefully, pulling up Vorik's projections with a few quick commands to the computer. "We're working at maximum now--I don't think that we can go any faster without corrupting what data is left."

"Keep me informed, Mr. Carey." Commander Chakotay nodded sharply, half turning to leave, before stopping, a speculative glance falling on him. Carey felt himself stiffen automatically.

"Is there any sign of a detonation device in the explosion patterns?" he said softly. Before Carey could find a way out of that question, the voice became even softer. "I know the Captain ordered a complete analysis of the remains--just tell me what you've found so far."

"That's Sue's assignment, Commander," Joe answered slowly. Then, head tilted, he let his voice drop lower as well. "She says there are no signs of a detonation device, but that the vaporization of the speculated location of the device could--"

"But in the striations on the hull, the interior--anything?" The dark eyes were intense.

"Nothing that couldn't be simple chemical meltdown," Joe answered. The face before him relaxed, almost imperceptibly if you weren't staring straight into those eyes and could read the relief written there, however briefly it flashed before the legendary impassivity took control once again.

"Good work, Lieutenant," he said easily, voice normal, almost as if to underline his earlier intensity. As if it were any other day in engineering, as if there hadn't been so damned much riding on every one of Carey's responses He picked up the PADDs and turned to leave.

The Commander had gotten two steps before Joe, to his own surprise, heard himself speak, still low, pitched for Chakotay's ears alone.

An admission he never would have thought to make even five minutes before.

"She didn't do it, Commander."

The slightest stiffening of the red-clad back as it approached the door before it opened and he was gone.

It could have been a mistake, to say that, here and now, with the overwhelming evidence and the Captain's certainty and B'Elanna unable to speak for herself in Sickbay. It could have been the biggest mistake of his career to date, in fact, second only to signing up on this godforsaken ship for a shakedown cruise that had turned into a lifetime journey.

But Joe Carey was sure he saw the almost imperceptible nod and single, understanding glance before the doors closed again.

* * * * *

By all rights, Sue should have left off her investigation and repairs for Alpha Shift the next day, during her normal duty shift. Tom thought he should probably be in bed himself, re-reading the lovely and so-telling PADDs he'd discovered on his doorstep.

Not exactly restful reading material, but Tom honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd slept straight through a night anyway. Years ago. More than he'd ever had any interest in counting. Though lately, he was pretty certain he'd turned insomnia into a form of recreation.

"What the hell is wrong with this program?" He heard Sue's voice as if from far away.

"Damn it!" Something hit the floor of the holodeck. From the sound, it seemed to be a hypospanner. Sue might have been responding to his own thoughts--or the fact the holodeck wouldn't re-initialize. He placed the PADD on the floor, absently wiping the impression from his fingers, then turned his attention to the frustrated engineer.

Sue's reaction to annoyance was pretty familiar--at least, to Tom, seated on the floor, surrounded by PADDs and tricorders, calmly coordinating data as if it was the only thing on his mind. He'd known her a long time, knew, as few did, that it took a lot to break her general air of complacence in the world, the almost relentless good cheer she mirrored to others without effort.

Tom turned his eyes back down to the tricorder, watching the growing patterns. Patterns he knew were there, even if he couldn't figure out what they were, what they meant.

"There's a record for a malfunction around the time B'Elanna was injured," Tom said slowly, staring at the readings.

Fixated on holodeck malfunctions--what he should be doing is going straight to the Captain, telling her what Harry had been doing, telling her what he suspected--

He'd be lucky if he wasn't confined to quarters under observation while they spaced B'Elanna.

And Harry--Harry, Harry, Harry, best friend, primary co-conspirator in his murder--and *that* was enough to keep Tom up at night if nothing else would--talking to an invisible someone in his room.

Talking, as it was, to a patch of air on his bed.

Sue turned, and he watched her push a stray strand of dark hair from her face, frowning over the control console, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. He remembered that from the construction of the Cochrane, long-lost transwarp pioneer that it was, and it was almost, not quite but almost, enough to make him smile.

"You think the holodeck has something to do with the explosion?" She didn't sound surprised--he looked up, nodding as she crouched beside him, her hair tickling his ear as she leaned over his shoulder, studying the data. "Okay, I see what you're talking about. There are a lot of correlations of holodeck malfunctions and something--er, interesting," she smiled a little self-consciously, "happening on board." She traced down the page with one tapered finger, and Tom heard her breath hiss between her teeth. "There--when you and Harry had that argument in the corridor--five minutes before, there was another malfunction--we shut it down from Engineering ten minutes after getting the report. I wonder why B'Elanna never authorized just putting this program in cold-storage until we figured out what was wrong." Sue turned her head slightly, meeting his eyes. "So the holodeck problems are having a nice coincidence with some significant events on Voyager?" She sounded faintly skeptical.

"Weird is part of the job, Lieutenant," Tom answered, giving her a smirk. "And yeah--I think so." Tom frowned over the readings. "There it is--a few minutes before the Delta Flyer exploded, it's here too. Another when I was released from Sickbay. This is a hell of a malfunction history for a program." He glanced at her PADD, almost forgotten in her far hand, then back to his own. "Interesting. Can we load these into the computer? I want to see if there's a pattern."

"Yeah," she answered, rising with that intrinsic grace that years of dance training had given her, walking to the console and beginning to upload the information. He remembered, faintly, with a kind of bittersweet pleasure, those days earlier in the voyage, when they'd visited Earth via the holodeck and she'd introduced him to the New York City Ballet and the Parisian opera house she'd interned in--before joining Starfleet, she'd had a strong background in music and dance. He remembered asking her why she'd ended up in the 'Fleet--remembered her faint smile and slow shake of her head, as if she wasn't sure either.

He remembered, quite suddenly and for no discernable reason, when she'd taught him how to dance in Sandrine's. He could almost hear the music.

"What are you looking for?"

He snapped back to the present, pulling his eyes back down to the PADDs.

"Coincidences," he answered briefly, following her and holding out the next pad. Tom had a strong respect for coincidence. He just didn't believe that they happened on such a regular, nicely patterned basis.

He picked up Seven's oh-so-fascinating B'Elanna-is-guilty ship's log entries, checking the times.

It had tickled his mind before, though not much--there were far too many other equally interesting little occurrences going on, to devote his mind to how Seven had managed to discover and decrypt so many log entries, find erasures, and generally uncover a massive mystery single-handedly, to devote a lot of his time to wondering how she did it.

Somehow, he just didn't think that was the answer. This was *B'Elanna*, after all. If anyone could hide a conspiracy, she could.

"And another one, the night before Harry and Seven announced B'Elanna's tricorder was not salvageable. And this one--a few minutes before B'Elanna was--injured." His voice gave him away and he felt Sue's brief touch on his shoulder, the only sympathy he would accept. "Transporter correlation on the first one from B'Elanna's room." He bit back what he knew would be a growl--one of those things he'd picked up almost without thinking from B'Elanna and had learned to like. He could understand why she did it so often.

Just once, couldn't it be simple? One simple answer.

"So B'Elanna did have the tricorder that night--how the hell did she get it from Engineering?" Sue took the tricorder Tom handed her. Wisely, she didn't comment on the fact that some of the data within--scratch that, most of it--was restricted information. Tom liked her for that. "The transporter logs, twice, less than an hour apart, but how the hell did she do the damage without the ship's security sounding an alert?"

"Disable the connection to Ops and fake a few entries." At Sue's glance of surprise, Tom smiled a little. "Sue, trust me, after six years on this ship, anyone could bypass ship's security if they were desperate enough, given sufficient time." There was also the issue of being the lover of a chief engineer that had extended his education into ship's system, but that just wasn't something he was prepared to think about at just this second. "And B'Elanna has engineering access codes. Hell, she could have convinced the computer to tell Ops it was snowing on deck eight if she felt like it." Sue's lips turned up briefly before she removed the tricorder and took the next PADD Tom handed her.

"Sue, has--" he stopped, trying to frame his question, because he wasn't even sure what he was asking--it was vague idea meandering in the back of his mind. "Tell me something about the computer diagnostic program--yeah, I looked at your findings--you didn't find anything, did you?"

Sue shook her head and pushed the hair from her cheek again before looking up again.

"Be specific."

Tom blinked, trying to get ahold of the stray thought that refused to settle long enough to be pinned down and articulated.

"Anything pointing at a suspect, Sue." He winced at his own phrasing, hating the sound of it, the thought of it, that this was actually happening, that there was proof someone had tried to kill him, and that he was here, on nothing more than pure faith, searching for the suspect because he couldn't believe it was B'Elanna.

"Well, to answer your question," she looked thoughtful, "--no, there wasn't anything on it that pointed to negligence on either Seven or B'Elanna's part, nor anything that suggested tampering with the program. Core retrieval so far hasn't shown anything either--but it may take weeks to get it in order. It's moving slowly--Vorik doesn't want to take any chances and the information he gets off it is restricted to Captain Janeway, Commander Chakotay, and Commander Tuvok--" she stopped, biting her lip briefly.

Tuvok was stable, but that was all that could be said for him.

{Weeks.} Tom, who trusted his instincts, felt that odd itch in the back of his neck that practically screamed to hurry, that they might not have that much time, not even close to that much--that whatever the hell was happening, it was happening fast and going faster every second he sat here, staring at meaningless columns of data.

By the look on Sue's face when her eyes met his, he knew she felt the same thing.

* * * * *

"What happened to Tuvok?" They were the first words out of his mouth the second the door of the Doctor's office was closed and the privacy blind was down. He didn't even bother taking a seat.

"Sit down, Commander." The Doctor sank into his own seat even as he spoke, looking far more harried than Chakotay had ever seen him. His call to Chakotay had been vague at very best, but one word had stood out--Tuvok.

Chakotay hadn't bothered to listen further.

The Doctor's mouth went down briefly, eyes falling to the surface of the desk before coming back up with a combination of impatience and frustration that was difficult to understand.

"Stable." Chakotay had never seen the Doctor at so much of a loss for words. With a sense of fascination, he watched him pick up a PADD, only to lay it aside, then absently flicker his fingers across the desk.

Remarkably human for a hologram. Chakotay slowly took a seat, watching those restless hands. He had to admit, the Doctor was remarkably calm, despite the fact that one of his patients was on life support and the other--Chakotay automatically veered from the thought, but couldn't stop the dart of his eyes to the privacy blinds. B'Elanna was sedated, now behind a forcefield, due to her remarkably traceable hacking adventure the night before.

She hadn't even bothered to try to cover it up, either what she'd accessed or how she'd done it. And that really made Chakotay think. Hard.

"I've been examining the injuries Commander Tuvok sustained," the Doctor began, staring down at the surface of his desk as if it somehow had the answers to all medical mysteries, before he looked up.

"And?"

He shook his head slowly.

"There is a photonic residue remaining on his injuries." There was a mild ring to the words, as if they had some kind of significance that Chakotay, in his abstraction, was just missing. Chakotay digested the statement. Apparently, that was supposed to mean something.

"Photonic energy? You mean holographic residue?"

The Doctor nodded impatiently.

"On the injuries, because you treated him--" No, that couldn't be right. Chakotay frowned, seeing the Doctor's frustration.

"On the injuries, because a holographic phaser caused it."

There was a brief moment in which Chakotay's mind simply refused to compute it, because it didn't make sense.

"Tuvok would have to be on the holodeck for that to work. And he wasn't--"

"I know."

"He was in his quarters--he wasn't anywhere near the holodeck, he interviewed Harry in his office--went to his quarters while B'Elanna was--while B'Elanna--"

"Why did he go to his quarters between interviews?" the Doctor asked, and Chakotay's head came up sharply.

There was a moment of utter blankness as Chakotay's mind suddenly did one of those odd, astounding leaps that made everything so obvious--so ridiculously obvious that probably Naomi Wildman would have known to ask that single question, the one question that not one of them had thought to ask.

Why Tuvok, the model Starfleet security officer, had abruptly left his office after Harry's interview had ended and minutes before B'Elanna's was to begin.

"I don't know."

"Maybe he was meeting her there--" That might be Chakotay's method, but Tuvok was by the book Starfleet--for an official investigation, the questioning would be in his office. Complete with official recordings of all that went on--and there was only empty time after Harry had departed, his damning testimony given, putting him at the top of the suspect list--Harry, who had had motive and opportunity--

--*Harry*, who was completely unaccounted for in that time period, because they'd found that scheduled appointment for B'Elanna, to meet Tuvok, to be asked some questions--

--who'd never arrived in the office that Tuvok had left.

With Seven's discovered logs to back up Tuvok's original suspicion she'd been behind the explosion. Seven's so conveniently recovered logs, all those miraculously decoded entries right there, the very next day, just in time to convict B'Elanna of attempted murder--

Harry had sat through that staff meeting and listened to B'Elanna be railroaded and said nothing.

Photonic residue, and Harry a master programmer.

Spirits, he could be blind.

"I'll be back, Doctor," Chakotay said shortly, rising from the chair, barely noticing the Doctor had risen too, not quite listening to the question the Doctor was asking him, the PADD clutched in his hand. "I have to check on something."

* * * * *

Seven flipped on the lights as she entered her quarters.

"Computer, display messages."

As she placed her reports at her workstation, she glanced briefly at Tom's. Their quarters had included two comfortable bedrooms, a large public area, and an office of sorts, where they had their workstations located. Seven looked at Tom's dark terminal for a moment, then sat down at her own, checking the reports that had been submitted by her staff in Astrometrics.

Captain Janeway had called her into her office to, as the Captain put it, 'chat'. Seven had often found these informal conversations helpful. Seven had missed these conversations during the period of time Tuvok was investigating the explosion of the Delta Flyer. Now that it was resolved, the Captain had felt comfortable in inviting Seven to join her for coffee during her assigned "breaks".

The Captain had expressed regret over their recent estrangement and was encouraging of Seven's efforts to re-establish her relationship with Tom. It had been a most satisfying interview and Seven had left with a definite sense of accomplishment.

Efficiently, Seven sorted her messages, beginning the process of deletion of unnecessary communications, briefly scanning reports for later study--

As she scrolled down, she saw a message from Tom.

* * * * *

Tom pulled up the source code on his program. Something nagged at his mind, a question he hadn't thought to ask the last time he'd been here, examining his program. Something obvious, something that wouldn't occur to him, something--

"Computer, who was the last person to make modifications to this program?"

"The last person to make modifications to this program was Ensign Kim, stardate--."

It was always the obvious things you missed. Some kind of law--Murphy's?--that stated that you'd turn yourself inside out trying to find out answers to questions you hadn't asked yet but never thought to ask the one question that would make everything click into place.

"Got it." Tom let his breath out, looking down at the coding. "What the hell was he doing? Computer, isolate all changes performed by Ensign Kim on that day."

As the computer worked, Tom felt Sue looking over his shoulder.

"Sue, you do much holoprogramming?" Tom asked. A short silence that surprised him, and he turned slightly to see Sue's eyes fixed on the numbers. "Sue?"

She looked up abruptly.

"What? Holoprogramming? Uh--not much. Some." She looked back at the screen. "Why? If you mean, can I figure out what's wrong with the program--probably not. What--what do you see?"

Tom shrugged slightly, watching the changes.

"Gotcha," he whispered. He froze the screen. "A worm program--initialized the last time Harry did modifications."

"Worm?" Her voice sounded faint--or maybe he was concentrating too much on the readings.

"A simple integration of aspects of one holodeck program into another." Tom answered absently. "And done very clumsily at that--it's what is causing the break-down in initialization. Harry's a master holoprogrammer, though--why he did it so badly, why he did it at all--. I think--no." Tom turned slightly. "Computer, isolate foreign program and run."

A man shimmered into life in front of them. Tom blinked.

"Yeah, I thought so." He shook his head slowly. Green eyes, dark hair, fair complexion, in beach clothing. "I was trying to figure out why I wrote a holocharacter into this one--looks like I didn't." Tom looked back down, sighing softly. "And I can't get it out either--its integrated into the program now--I can't get it out without rewriting half of it. Damn." He tapped his fingers impatiently on the console. "But that still doesn't explain why the hell the holodeck breaks down every single damned time."

He turned to see Sue staring at the hologram, face blank.

"Sue?"

"Tom, I could run some diagnostics," she said slowly, eyes still fixed on the character. "If you can wait a few hours, I'll talk to Joe--he can use some of the engineering diagnostics to try and sort it out and make the correlations you were talking about earlier. He's on gamma and it's pretty quiet--I'm sure he wouldn't mind helping us out."

Tom nodded slowly. Before he could speak, Sue reached over and touched the controls off. The character shimmered into nothingness. Her head was down as she began to gather PADDs up.

"I'd better get down there, before the warp core has some problem or a relay blows out and takes up all of Joe's time--" Her voice was forced lightness, and Tom brushed her shoulder with the tips of his fingers.

"Sue--" he stopped, seeing her look away briefly, blue eyes dropping to her PADD with all the energy she possessed. "Sue, give me your theory."

"Huh?" Blue eyes widened and she almost dropped her PADDs.

"Sue, you have one, I know you do. Tell me what you think happened." He stopped for a minute, then met her eyes. "I want to know everything from the wedding on, Sue. Everything you remember--including this." He swiveled around, picking up the PADD he'd left beside the command console, placing it gently in her hands. "That you left for me."

She stiffened.

"You think I don't know who left these?"

It hadn't taken much deductive reasoning, after all. Especially when she left prints on the casing.

Sue slowly nodded, eyes never leaving the screen.

"I think--" she broke off, shaking her head sharply. "I don't know, Tom."

But the way she evaded his eyes--she knew something. He leaned over, hand covering hers briefly."

"Sue-"

"Tom." She stopped, shaking her head again. "Not now. Let me--let me talk to Carey first, okay? To see what he says--then I'll tell you what I know. Though I think you have it all now." She briefly squeezed his hand before pulling away, picking up a PADD to hand to him, and Tom took the hint, giving her a small smile as he turned to the door.

"I'll see you back here in three hours," Tom told her as he went to the door. "I have something I have to do."

Sue's eyebrows jumped into her hair and a faint, strained grin lifted her lips briefly.

"Really?" Her arms trembled and she briefly set down her PADDs.

He smiled, showing all his teeth, slapping the PADD into the palm of his hand.

"I have a meeting with Seven."

* * * * *

Harry picked up the bottle--half-empty, of course, like his life--and threw it across the room.

There it was, that blank space in his quarters he'd never put anything up on, now decorated, and quite adequately, by the splotched blue remains of Saurian brandy. It was a nicely abstract pattern--and it even had made to order meaning.

Meaning--Harry had run out of options.

Out of everything--friends, reasons, things to do, ways to justify himself. Ensign Kim had finally screwed up completely, totally, beyond all expectation.

B'Elanna was in Sickbay. Tom was God-knew-where, but he knew, he *knew*, before Harry had spoken a word, that Q was involved. He knew B'Elanna was involved. And he knew, and Harry had no idea how, that Seven had been using him in their relationship. He knew about those damned PADDs.

It was always encouraging to know what your friends *really* thought of you. What they implied to their wives in private, behind closed doors, maybe just after fucking the daylights out of a pretty Borg body. Cheering to realize you are a focal point of conversation.

Damnably, everything she said was true.

Harry ran his fingers over the skin of his face, through his hair. Thought about how she'd looked, probably, making that note of the failings of Harry Kim, which could quite possibly be considered a chapter in itself by now. He could even see her in the Messhall, patiently writing out those little diary entries with a steady hand and a tilted head.

She'd loved Tom--he knew that. And she'd used him. And it was funny--sometimes he'd thought Tom had been using her.

And Q wasn't here to tell him what to do, how to do it, what he should be saying, thinking, reacting--and he knew there was a time that he hadn't required omnipotent guidance to live his life.

There had to have been. But here was Harry, struggling to find a single thought that was his own. One single thing he had done because *he* thought it was right.

Hell, right was what worked. And he'd have done right if any of it had worked out like it was supposed to. Tom would be cozy in quarters with B'Elanna and Harry would be asking Seven to change him into whatever the hell it was she wanted in a husband, a lover, a mate.

:::Nicoletti to Ensign Kim.:::

Harry started, staring at his commbadge discarded on the coffee table.

With slowed reflexes, he reached out, fumbling for the device, and it slipped his fingers, falling to the floor somewhere in the shadows between couch and table.

"Damn it!" He went down on his knees, trying to see where it rolled. Briefly, it occurred to him to call for lights.

:::Nicoletti to Kim. Harry, are you there?::: There was an edge of desperation to her voice that galvanized Harry into action. He combed the floor with his fingers, breaking a nail on the sharp leg of the coffee table, finding the edge and pulling it out, activating it with a touch.

"Harry here, Sue. What do you need?" His voice slurred and he knew it and was several steps beyond anything resembling active shame.

A brief silence, then--

:::Harry, something's happened. I need your help.:::

* * * * *

"Ensign Vorik."

The Ensign turned at the sound of Carey's voice. Joe waited until Vorik was within a few feet of him, in perfect military posture (could you expect less from Vorik?), before speaking again.

"What is the analysis on the core?"

Vorik raised one eyebrow in exquisite Vulcan query but answered readily.

"Twenty percent has been downloaded and defragmented, sir."

Joe nodded slowly.

"Have you found anything unusual?"

Vorik blinked, a sure sign of Vulcan surprise that Carey would question Vorik's reports.

"Nothing pertaining to the explosion, Lieutenant," Vorik said. "Random information off the core." If it was even possible, Vorik's voice actually sounded--miffed? Carey caught himself suppressing an inappropriate smile.

"I want a copy of what was found uploaded to the Chief's station," Carey answered. If Vorik could look offended, there it was, making an already expressionless face become granite. "Don't look like that, Vorik, I'm not competence your skill--I just want to look over a few things. See what we've found."

"You have a theory, sir?" The curiosity was unmistakable.

Everyone had theories. Theories littered the minds of every denizen of Voyager and could possibly be tripped over in the corridors. Doubtless even the holograms in the holodeck had theories by now. And every one of them was worth squat unless there was something to back them up.

"No." Vorik would approve of that, he supposed--approve of the lack of conclusions before a proper investigation. Joe didn't have a theory, he had a simple, undeniable fact--B'Elanna hadn't tried to kill Tom and hadn't tried to kill Tuvok. He wondered, briefly, if Vorik thought B'Elanna was guilty too, then dismissed the speculation. "I just want to look at the information. See to it."

"Yes, sir. I'll send them now." Vorik turned crisply on his Starfleet-issue heel and Carey turned back around, finding himself staring down at his workstation, the reports Commander Chakotay had demanded still open.

Engineering was quiet. He transferred them to B'Elanna's office (feeling a completely inappropriate guilt that he was entering her domain) and set himself to read.

* * * * *

Seven turned to Tom's jukebox in the corner, studying the selections carefully.

"Seven." A silky purr that raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

She recognized the voice long before turning to see him standing by her couch.

"Leave."

"Leave?" He cocked his head slightly, eyebrows raised in a disturbingly familiar rendition of Tuvok's similar expression. "What's up, Ice Princess?" He took in her clothing, her hair, and smiled. "Tommy-boy coming over to play?"

Seven stiffened, turning to the jukebox.

"You think it's going to be that easy?" His voice was softer, closer to her ear--no, he was closer, and Seven jerked away, staring down at the selections blindly. "You think he's going to walk in and just--pick everything up where it left off?"

"I am not interested in your suppositions," Seven answered tightly. Before she could move away, one arm snaked around and touched a button.

The music made Seven stiffen abruptly.

"You remember." His voice was soft.

Seven closed her eyes.

* * * * *

The Messhall was very crowded. Seven stiffened almost as soon as the doors closed behind them, and Tom seemed to know it immediately. Without hesitation, he led her to the clearest area of the room--ironically the buffet--and turned her to face him.

It had taken several hours for Tom to explain to her how important it was that she attend the small celebration Neelix had put together for the Equinox crewmembers. It was to be a "welcoming" party of sorts, and as a senior officer, Seven was quite aware she was required to attend.

She did not have to enjoy it, however. She glanced around the room, feeling the press of people, of conversation--

"You okay?" His voice was low in her ear and she turned her head, blinking slightly. The arm around her waist tightened and Seven allowed herself to lean into it.

"I am--I do not enjoy the number of people here, Tom." She heard the edge in her voice and shook herself--she was not afraid.

Merely--wary.

"Seven--okay, just take some deep breaths." Tom's instinctive understanding of her feelings was comforting. "We'll find the Captain, talk to a few people, play nice with the new kids, eat something that with any luck won't poison us, then leave." With his free hand, he picked up a drink and handed it to her. She took the cool glass between her fingers and took a small sip. The flavor was mildly fruity, with a crisp aftertaste she found rather refreshing.

"Its not synthehol or alcohol," Tom told her with a little grin, taking one for himself. "Are you hungry?"

Seven gave a glance at the food and was reminded that she had learned to enjoy flavor. It was unfortunate, however, that she could not briefly forget. Tom read her expression, and she saw him stifle a laugh.

"Okay, later. Come on, let's find the Captain." He placed a reassuring hand on her elbow, glancing around the room and a smile turned the corners of his mouth. "Second best thing--Harry, Sue, and B'Elanna are over there." He squeezed her arm gently, then began to move through the crowd effortlessly.

Seven sometimes wondered at his ease in social situations. Despite her advances in understanding human behavior, she did not enjoy social encounters with large groups.

The three they sought were seated at a small table near one of the observation windows. Tom took a seat, urging Seven down in the one between him and Harry, and gave the group a grin. Seven saw his gaze narrow, just slightly, at the sight of the fourth member of the group--Seven recognized him from their original introduction. "Burke, right?" There was an unfamiliar edge to his voice, as well as a clearly-feigned absentmindedness that Seven did not find characteristic in her lover. Tom rarely forgot anything.

Seven wondered why Tom pretended he did not remember the identity of Max Burke, when it was plain he recognized the officer.

"Paris." Max smiled, then looked at Seven. "Seven of Nine, is that correct?"

"It is." She took another sip of her drink, glancing at the other occupants of the table. Max had turned his attention back to Lieutenant Torres. With interest, she observed Max place a hand over Lieutenant Torres' on the table, saying something to her Seven did not hear, making her smile.

Sue pushed her plate across the table, distracting Seven's observations.

"Neelix made gagh," Sue said, glancing briefly at B'Elanna. "He found out there's a traditional Klingon feastday today."

Tom studied the slightly moving--mass--briefly.

"Don't tell me--was the greenish stuff--Plomeek soup?" He looked at Harry's bowl. It seemed to Seven he was deliberately excluding Lieutenant Torres and Commander Burke from his attention. "What Vulcan holiday is Tuvok declining to celebrate?"

Harry wrinkled his nose.

"It's not plomeek soup that deserves the name." Harry pushed his bowl over, grinning. "Try some, Seven."

Seven looked down at it.

"It looks offensive." Its odor was also unpleasant.

B'Elanna, leaning back in her chair, glanced between Seven and Harry for a moment. Max laughed, shaking his head slightly. Seven was aware Tom had stiffened beside her.

"It is offensive to those of us with the ability to taste. I thought taste was irrelevant?" There was a slight edge to her voice which Seven did not recognize, and she glanced at Max, who grinned back.

Seven pushed the bowl aside.

"In certain cases, I have found taste to be--necessary." She looked at the gagh. "Why is that dish kinetically capable?"

Sue opened her mouth to say something, then shut it tight and giggled. Tom slid the plate back to the center of the table.

"Thanks but no thanks, Sue. I'm getting something to eat. What do you want, Seven?"

She looked up as she placed her beverage on the table. And deeply appreciated his offer to get her dinner, so she did not have to navigate the room again. And smiled for him.

"I do not object to anything you choose to bring, Tom." She glanced at the table. "However, I would prefer that it did not--" she gave the bowl a long look before turning her eyes up back to him "--move."

Both Harry and Tom laughed. Sue stood up.

"I'll go with you. I might as well find something edible." She was at Tom's side and their voices drifted back to those at the table. "You should see what Neelix did to the pizza..."

"He fetches for you now, too?" B'Elanna asked, sipping her drink. Seven saw Harry shoot a look at B'Elanna but could not interpret it. "You've got him well-trained, Seven. I'm impressed." She followed the statement with a low chuckle, her eyes meeting Burke's for a moment.

"He is aware I do not--enjoy--large crowds," Seven responded, taking a sip of her juice.

"Ah."

Commander Burke sipped his drink

"What are you having, Seven?" He glanced pointedly at the glass in her hand.

"Fruit juice." She noted, for the first time, that she didn't recognize the flavor and had neglected to ask Tom.

"Try something a little bit harder." He slid his glass across the table, accompanied by another significant glance at B'Elanna. Seven took a breath and smelled the liquor. She drew back.

"I do not enjoy the effects of synthehol," Seven answered briefly. Her only experience with it had been--unpleasant.

"When did you have synthehol to know for sure?" B'Elanna asked, then shrugged, picking up her own drink and taking a sip. Then-- "There'll be dancing later--Tom is a good dancer. Are you staying for that?"

Seven blinked, then shook her head. The change of subject was mildly disconcerting.

"No, I do not see the value of that recreational activity."

Harry grinned at her over his drink.

"Try it and you might like it. You didn't think you'd like parasailing either, and now we can barely get you out of the holodeck when Tom runs the program."

"True." Seven surveyed the room, disliking the idea of being in the crowd for any reason, but also curious to see if Tom did indeed "dance" well. She had not known he possessed that skill. "I shall consider it."

B'Elanna snorted softly.

"Seven, you want to learn more about humanity--trust me, dancing is as human as you can get."

Seven turned her gaze on the engineer.

"Explain."

B'Elanna put her drink down and pressed her palms to the table, brown eyes fixed on Seven's face.

"Dancing can be a lot of things--but it's mostly a form of provocation--sexual."

Commander Burke leaned over to say something to B'Elanna in a voice too low for Seven to hear. B'Elanna laughed softly and nodded.

"Sexual?" Seven pulled up her research from the database--but she'd apparently missed something. She remembered very little on the human custom of dancing.

"Courtship behavior," Harry answered. "But it can be a sign of friendship, an athletic activity, a game--it can be a test of stamina or flexibility or art, depending on the case. The music is starting." Harry watched the crowd part, opening up the middle of the room easily. "Depending on the music, the situation, and the person you are with--but it's always a performance."

Seven watched two crewmembers enter the center of the floor, more following quickly, close together. It was a faster beat than she was accustomed to hearing, as Tom preferred jazz whenever he expressed a preference.

"I remember--what was it, the third year on Voyager?--that Tom and B'Elanna decided to make the dance a competition." Harry grinned a little, and B'Elanna, to Seven's surprise, flushed.

"I drank too much that night," B'Elanna muttered, picking up her glass again and taking a drink.

"I don't think that was all," Harry teased, and Tom and Sue came into range, carrying plates. Tom set one in front of Seven, handing her the appropriate utensils, and looked curiously at Harry as he sat down.

"What're you talking about?"

"The Talaxian Celebration of Thanksgiving," B'Elanna answered dryly. Tom blinked, staring between her and Harry.

"When you and B'Elanna outlasted everyone else on the floor--remember?" Harry laughed, picking up his drink and twirling the delicate flute with idle fingers. "It was Gamma shift before either of you would call it quits--two hours before you both went on duty."

"I had too much to drink that night," Tom answered, picking up a meatroll but not looking terribly interested in it. "And we were both tired at the end--" he looked thoughtful, "--though you know, I think I was the last to leave the floor." He took a bite, giving B'Elanna a slight smirk.

"You think you outlasted me?" B'Elanna shook her head, seemingly disbelieving. "Tom, you couldn't outlast me in anything."

"Well, in some things, I could." They seemed to have forgotten the others were at the table, and Seven was suddenly aware that Tom was looking at B'Elanna in a manner she did not recognize. She turned her gaze on Harry, who was watching both of them in turn, an odd smile on his face. Commander Burke's smile had faded and his gaze was sharply riveted on B'Elanna. Lieutenant Nicoletti was looking down at her glass, lips curved, but Seven did not know why.

"Tom, you may be a great pilot, but you have no memory worth speaking of." B'Elanna tossed her head. "And you never got the tango right anyway."

Tom dropped the meatroll, wiping his fingers on the napkin beside his plate.

"Is that a challenge, Torres?"

B'Elanna put down her glass with an audible thump, meeting his eyes.

"No--it's a fact. Get up, Lieutenant--let's see if age has improved you any."

Tom's arm swept out in an elaborate gesture of precedence, accompanied by a low bow. "Lead the way, Chief."

Seven blinked, turning in her chair to watch the two approach the floor, with the grimly amused expressions of combatants.

The music changed almost the second they got on the floor, and Seven saw B'Elanna stiffen abruptly, stepping back, saying something Seven could not hear. Tom leaned down, a recognizably playful smile on his face as he pulled her gently toward him, one arm lightly encircling her waist.

Then they began to move.

Seven did appreciate the perfect rhythm they achieved together, something few of the other couples on the floor had managed.

Seven heard Ensign Kim murmur something to Lieutenant Nicoletti with a low laugh, but didn't turn around to discover what amused them. She watched Tom turn Lieutenant Torres in a slow circle, smiling slightly--

Then Lieutenant Torres moved closer, head tilted up, perhaps to remark on the decibel of the music, which was deafening to Seven, or the lack of sufficient light for those who did not possess an ocular implant--and she watched Tom look down at her with an expression Seven knew--just *knew*--Tom had never directed at her.

They were close together. Tom's hand slid up to rest between Lieutenant Torres' shoulder blades to make a slow spin. Seven heard someone rise behind her, glanced back briefly to see Commander Burke also watching them, an unfamiliar expression on his face.

She felt that expression curve the lines of her own face, all unwitting.

Then their bodies touched, Tom tilting Lieutenant Torres' head up when she looked away, the smile fading from his face, replaced by something else, perhaps something he wasn't even aware of, and Seven's breath stopped--

--Tom had never touched her like that. Never looked at her like that.

Never offered to dance with her.

The music was ending, and Seven rose instantly, leaving the plate of food forgotten on the table behind her. Tom and Lieutenant Torres slowly returned to the table, but Seven noted that Tom's arm remained around her waist.

"I wish to leave." Her voice was oddly loud--the music had quieted and she was aware of the glances of the crew.

Tom blinked, almost as if he had forgotten she was here. She felt her cheeks flush.

"You don't want to eat somethi--"

"I wish to leave now, Tom." She knew her voice was inappropriately modulated for the location.

She'd never been so agitated before.

Lieutenant Torres had slipped back to her chair, picking up her glass with one hand and taking a long drink. Her gaze never returned to Tom.

Slowly, he nodded, telling the table some pointless comments before coming to her side, taking her arm as he usually did, and as they exited the messhall to return to their quarters, Seven began to wonder if she had over-reacted to something as simple as a dance--

* * * * *

"That was about the time you asked Helmboy to marry you," he said with a smirk. "He beat you to it, of course, but that's when you decided, didn't you? Brought you to the realization that if you didn't move fast enough, he just might toss you over for the pretty half-Klingon with the temper and the history."

"It meant nothing." Her fingers found her ring, rubbing it lightly with her thumb.

"It doesn't look like nothing." Q leaned against the door, his eyes fixed on her face. "It looks a lot like something to me--but then, what do I know?" He grinned, studying her face. "Maybe you should be pregnant--that would get him back, wouldn't it?"

Seven stiffened, turning away.

"I do not practice deceit." Her voice betrayed her anger at the very suggestion. Q seemed more amused than anything else.

"Unless it was for Tom's own good, right, Seven? I mean, going behind his back to talk to Janeway after he became infatuated with a great big space lake, betraying his confidence--"

"I explained my actions--"

"After he found out what you did." His voice mocked her.

Seven turned away.

"That is irrelevant."

"How 'bout your PADDs, Seven dear?" She could feel his gaze on her back, digging in to her skin through her loose dress, making the flesh of her back crawl. It was her imagination, this reaction. She lifted her head higher, arms crossed over her chest. "Not telling is *so* close to just lying, you know. Perhaps you should give him full disclosure now on all those things you didn't get around to telling him before the--accident." Suddenly, his breath was on the back of her neck. "Tell him about sabotaging his Monean fantasies, tell him about your PADDs, tell him about all the little ways you separated him from the crew, tell him how you manipulated your dear friend Harry into covering for you--and then get around to telling him you helped electrocute his lover." His hands fell on her shoulders, trapping her underneath the hard palms, and illogically began to steal her breath.

"Tell him what really happened to B'Elanna."

Seven swallowed in a dry throat, exoskeletoned fingers closing into a fist.

"I did it to protect him."

His voice was smooth whisper in her ear.

"Here's a thought, Seven--do you think he'll care *why* ?"

* * * * *

:::Chakotay to Carey.:::

Cary put down the core report with a sigh, leaning back to hear his back pop before tapping his commbadge with two fingers.

"Carey here." He managed, just barely, to suppress a yawn.

:::You have a copy of Seven's recovered log entries report as acting head of engineering, correct?:::

Carey sat up straight, feeling a rush of energy, of hope, of--something indefinable, but he got it from the Commander's voice. Felt it through the commbadge against his chest.

"Yes, sir."

Those computer log files, that convicted B'Elanna. Those convenient logs that had been in the hands of the Captain less than a day after B'Elanna went into Sickbay.

He took a breath, letting it out slowly, trying to control the feeling.

:::Find out how she got them off the computer, when no one else could. Chakotay out.:::

Carey pulled up the report and touched his commbadge.

"Carey to Vorik."

There was a pause. Then--

:::Vorik here:::

"Get in here now. I need you to double verify a set of encoded log entries. Carey out." He tapped the connection closed before Vorik could answer, turning his full attention to the logs in his hands--the logs that had convicted B'Elanna, logs he'd never believed.

And felt, all unwitting, his lips curve into a smile.

* * * * *

Tom hadn't lost his ability to manipulate transporters--or his medical access codes, apparently. He beamed into Sickbay, still crouched near the floor, hoping against hope the Doctor was still doing housecalls and no one had yet considered posting security *inside* Sickbay, rather than just outside.

One of those weird things about the ship, something he never really paid attention to until he did something he *knew* was against regulations. No one ever covered every single possibility. There was always, *always*, a loophole somewhere. If you looked hard enough.

Though considering the state of the current occupants, he honestly couldn't blame security very much for being lax.

She was confined behind a forcefield, still unconscious. Carefully, he approached the console, then glanced back at Sickbay doors. It was a brief debate--locking them out wouldn't stop anyone from getting in, but it would delay them enough for him to get away--he thought. On the other hand, it would be depressingly obvious who had locked them out as well. And for now, he wanted to keep his snooping about as unobtrusive as possible.

He glanced at the console, seeing the authorization-required lock-out and sighed. Option two it was.

"Computer, seal Sickbay, medical authorization Paris Beta Sigma Three. Lower forcefield around patient B'Elanna Torres."

It shimmered off, and he stepped forward, automatically grabbing a medical tricorder to run over her, checking the current readings against her baseline. Besides the residual effects of exposure to high voltage, she was normal enough. Then put it aside, looking down at her for a long moment, studying the sleeping features. There was a stool nearby--he hooked it with the toes of one foot, drawing it nearer and sat down, finding her hand and gently squeezing the small fingers.

"I know you had something to do with Q," he said softly, knowing damned well she couldn't hear a word he said and not caring. "I know you destroyed that tricorder. And I know whatever you did, you thought you had a good reason for it. And I know you didn't try to kill me." He'd believe that until the day he died. He didn't have a choice. "Now I need to know why."

She'd made love to him, told him she loved him, and had conspired with Q, in some way, somehow, for some reason.

"You know something that's been going through my mind?" His voice was hoarse. "I mean, over and over and its the oddest thing, the one thing that I shouldn't be worrying about right now." He leaned over, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face, letting his fingers linger on her skin. "When we were kids, we all thought love was just something great, you know? Something wonderful and we wanted it so badly--romanticism at sixteen, at eighteen--then we get over it. I get hit with it at twenty-nine years old--something I haven't believed in for a decade--and what is it, anyway? I still don't know. Obsession, possession, need--I don't even know all the words to describe it. But I have it, for you, and I don't know what to do about it. You didn't try to kill me, I know that--but I want to know what you were trying to do. I need to know, because I can't sleep, I can't eat, I just wander around the ship trying to put it in context. Because I don't know you anymore, I don't even know *me* anymore. And what does that make me, that I'm willing to write off two years of my life and try to recapture something I can't even define, with someone I don't know?"

Maybe he did need a psych evaluation after all.

Tom shut his eyes, leaning his head on the edge of the biobed.

"Were you going to tell me? Is that why you're here now?" God, that was a comforting thought, and he needed those desperately. He lifted his head, touching her forehead with one finger, tracing the ridges. "I'm getting some answers, one way or another. Now." He watched her still face for a moment, then stood up. "No one's going to hurt you again. I promise, B'Elanna. No one."

* * * * *

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Sue was wringing her hands, which was interesting in itself and possibly even significant, though Harry couldn't quite bend his mind to the task of interpretation. Trying to look wise and sober at the same time, he leaned against the holodeck wall, arms crossed, hoping his balance at least made the pretext of staying put, and waited for her to continue.

"Harry--" She shook her head sharply, and Harry noted her teeth were grinding together. That was interesting as well. Harry wondered if he could hear them if he moved closer and almost gave in to the curiosity.

Almost. He wasn't sure he could stand upright now. And the wall was remarkably stationary (unlike the floor had been on his trip here) and he liked the wall for that.

"Harry, you remember Seven's diaries?"

Harry frowned and tried to look as if he was intelligently following this conversation.

Who could forget the wondrous diaries of Seven of Nine--Seven *Paris* he meant, Tom's lovely, accommodating, controlling, manipulating wife. The woman he wanted, that he hated, that he'd seen in a negligee one morning when he arrived early for breakfast, nothing left to the imagination, before she went into her room to change and Tom had come out with a cheerful smile and a nod and Harry knew, knew, that he'd finally managed it, finally been able to get there, the place he'd wanted to go so badly--

--he hated them. He hated Tom. Not just envied or disliked or felt betrayed by--he hated his best friend.

"Yeah, I remember." His voice was hoarse and the alcohol seemed to be fading, damn all, and he hated the encroaching sobriety. "Why?"

"I was the one that broke her algorithms."

The words were out in a violent rush, as if she was afraid that if she didn't say it fast she'd never say it at all and Harry took a moment to process it, process the look on her face, the wide blue eyes, the wringing hands, wondering why on earth she felt the need to confess now, to him, ruining his nicely cloudy world with this nasty reality business.

"Okay."

No--no okay, hold it. Harry blinked, thinking it over, then frowned again.

"Sue, you don't have that kind of expertise." And she didn't--Sue wasn't a high-level decrypter--while an excellent systems analyst and good programmer, she simply didn't have the training to do upper-level decryption, and certainly not Borg algorithmic codes.

"No," she answered, and her hands were still now, clasped together behind her back, but he wasn't an idiot, though he played the part so well that sometimes even he had trouble telling the difference. And he was missing something; he couldn't understand yet why the hell he was in a holodeck, during *gamma* shift of all indecent hours, losing his wonderful downtime of self-pity and amateur alcoholism so Sue could play penitent and he could forgive her...

"No." He echoed it, not sure what she wanted or why.

"No," she repeated. "I couldn't do it alone--I needed Voyager's decryption database--and your programs."

"My programs." She was leading up to something, but for the life of him, even with his head reluctantly clearing, he had no idea where she was going with this.

"Yeah. I--I needed advanced computer power, so I--I built a program in the holodeck. There--there wasn't anywhere else where I could do it--my workstation in engineering was too public and the one in my quarters didn't have that kind of upper-level computing access. So I built a program here--I--I used the records of Lieutenant Barclay's use of the holodeck on the Enterprise--"

"Stop." Harry levered himself upright, noted the floor remained still, and took two steps toward her, walking to the command console she'd programmed in. The visible lines of code looked remarkably--innocuous. "Okay, you wrote a holodeck program to decrypt Seven's codes? How did you--"

"I'm a system analyst, Harry. I can--I used the holodeck to tap into your decryption programs on the Universal translator."

That made sense. She'd covered her tracks--if anyone should be curious why anyone would want to use the translator--probably the most innocuous piece of programming in the Federation.

"But that wasn't enough." It was a statement, made in the vain hope she'd get to the point of this little exercise.

"No. I needed the key, so I--" She stopped abruptly, shaking her head. "I tried everything else, Harry--I did. I went through every possible permutation, but I couldn't break her codes. So I--I wrote in a character--"

It dawned on Harry that she was shaking and the last traces of alcohol-fogged thought cleared his brain. Damn it.

"You created a holocharacter?" His voice was sharp.

"It's a basic worm program--I got the character out of the files on the holodeck. It was--I programmed it to find out what codes she was using to encrypt her logs--she made her observations everywhere, Harry!" Sue took a shuddering breath and Harry--Harry began to feel a thought forming--not easily or quickly, it still had to go through a cloud of rapidly dissipating synthehol, but it was coming. "He was introduced into the next program Seven ran and he got the codes when she started uploading to her private database--I broke in and copied everything she had--"

"--and spread it over the ship." His voice was hoarse. "No one could figure out how that got out. You did it. With the holodeck."

He had to admire her initiative.

"With the holodeck," Sue whispered softly, nodding. She leaned back against the console, hands going out automatically to grip the edges tightly, knuckles going white under the strain. "And--" She stopped, taking a short breath. Part of Harry wanted to reach out to her, offer her some sort of comfort--the rest of him couldn't move.

"Tom never got the copy of the logs." He was running on automatic--there was something here that would make magnificent sense if he could just get his mind to curl around the problem and do some serious mulling.

Sue shook her head, her short hair slashing her face in black streaks at the violence of her reaction.

"No. No one told him. No one wanted to interfere." Her voice was bitter. "Even me. I couldn't--" She let it trail off, staring at the floor now, and he followed her gaze to watch her shifting, booted feet scuffing at the metal floor.

Nor could he. Tell Tom. Even try.

But he'd wanted Tom to find out. He just hadn't wanted to be the one who told him.

"Seven changed her codes and she--I couldn't get them again."

Harry nodded.

"So you had a holocharacter programmed to get the codes from Seven--and when exposing the logs failed--what did you do then?"

Somewhere, a part of him had a solution, improbably as it was, and he felt sick as she lifted her head, but was unable to meet his eyes.

* * * * *

Captain Janeway half rose as Chakotay tossed the report on her desk, reading it over slowly, listening to him tell her who he wanted and why. The grey blue eyes widened as they got to the relevant passages, then lifted, meeting his. Utterly blank, a neutral Starfleet Captain in every way but the twitch of her lips before even they took on the bland mantle of the absolute authority on this ship.

He couldn't even enjoy it. Not the triumph of being right, finally, of proving to her that her precious Borg wasn't so perfect, wasn't so wonderful, had done what he'd known she'd do--known she was capable of.

He bit his lip sharply, watching her eyes skim the codes.

"Carey double-checked her findings--I double-checked them--and I have a few questions for her." He leaned a hand on the desk, not letting her look away. "Carey agrees with me--there's no way she could have decrypted all those logs in less than twelve hours--unless she was the one that encrypted them in the first place. Not breaking engineering privacy codes, tracing origin of transmission--there's no way, Captain."

It was deliberate, her title--he wanted to remind her what side she *should* be on, dammit.

Janeway's eyes slid back down to the PADD, reading again.

"There's no way Seven could have found those logs on the computer by accident---unless she knew where they were already." He took a breath, raising his head. "I want Ensign Harry Kim and Ensign Seven Paris questioned in the attempted murder investigation of Lieutenant Tom Paris and Lieutenant Commander Tuvok--I want to know where they were when Tuvok was assaulted."

* * * * *

"What did you do, Sue?" His voice was hoarse.

Her head went down and Harry jerked it up with one surprisingly steady hand, forcing the blue eyes to his, staring into them, looking for something there--

"You saw what she was doing to him!" She jerked back, feet carrying her to the other side of the console as if it would protect her from something--maybe him, maybe herself. Harry let out a breath he hadn't even known he was holding, feeling his chest tighten.

"What are you talking about?" And it was truly remarkable how sober he now was.

"She *killed* him, Harry! You saw it, what she was doing--she wrote it in her notes, what was wrong with him, what she would do to fix him, like he was a damned computer! And in engineering--" her voice became hoarse and she turned arms crossing over her stomach as if to protect herself, voice defiant. "She didn't want him to socialize without her, she didn't like his relationships with the crew, she didn't like his friendships, she didn't like anything that didn't fit into her concept of what a Starfleet officer, what her lover, should be." Her voice dropped. "It was--it was a nightmare, seeing what she did to him--"

"In engineering." Engineering, and he searched for an event that would have precipitated this in his not-very reliable memory.

"She's the one that told Janeway about Tom's sympathy for the Moneans, Harry."

Harry didn't move, didn't even dare think about that little tidbit of information. He could still see Tom's face when he argued with the Captain about it--and a day later, as if nothing had happened while that world became a little blue dot on the sensors, swallowed in space.

"She told Janeway, who locked the Flyer down so Tom couldn't do anything--she told him what she did--she blackmailed him into accepting--"

"That was his choice, to be with her, knowing what she was!" He could even say it with a straight face, God knew how--Tom had been *light-years* away from knowing everything Seven was and could be.

Had been.

Sue turned startled eyes on him and he bit his tongue, turning back to stare down at the console without seeing one line of numbered code.

"Did he know?" Her voice was soft. "No one told him what she said about him, what she was doing to change him--the Moneans were only the most public display of what she was capable of--what she did day in and day out, isolating him from everyone so he didn't have anyone else--"

Harry wasn't sure he could deal with this right now--his head pounded and his mouth was dry and all he wanted to do was curl up somewhere and forget he'd ever heard the name Seven of Nine, Seven Paris, Seven of Borg--

"What else was he going to do?" Her voice became shrill, defensive mechanisms kicking in automatically. She got that way with a new piece of music she couldn't play the first time--diatribe against the composer as if he was out to ruin her life, even if he was thirty years dead. "You know everything, Harry. You know better than anyone and you sat back and let her rip him to pieces--"

"It was his choice--" {Blame me, Sue. I don't need you to, you know. I'm doing it on my own just fine, thank you.}

"She took away that choice!" Sue spun on one foot, hand slamming down on the PADD beside him on the console--Seven's diary, special issue reading material for the denizens of Voyager, Sue's purloined copy. "He was in love with her and she told him her way or nothing, and what the hell was he supposed to do? You played supportive best friend to them both, he lost B'Elanna when you decided revenge was the answer to your life's problems--she forced him to make a decision on her home ground, her rules--what the hell would you do?" Her voice echoed in the deserted room and Harry shut his eyes against the sound of it, hating the truth of her accusation. "I had to do something!"

Harry lifted his head.

"What did you do?" His voice was a whisper.

"What should have been done by you, his best friend--what I should have done, if I had the guts--what I had to do--" Her voice trailed off and Harry blinked, looking down at the code again, that innocuous code that meant something, something--

:::Chakotay to Ensign Kim.::::

Harry tapped his commbadge absently.

"Kim here, Commander."

:::Report to my office immediately. Chakotay out.:::

He tried to meet Sue's eyes, but they eluded him.

"I'll be back," he said softly, staring at the program again. And turning on his heel, he exited the holodeck.

Return to the One Word Page