On the bridge, Harry stood at his station, pretending to work but actually watching what everyone else was doing. Now they were out of the nebula, there was a brief lull in proceedings and he had time to engage in his favourite sport – people watching. Harry had always been good at noticing things, especially things that no one else did. The senior bridge crew was the most fun. He knew all their little routines and quirks. He watched now as Tuvok's fingers darted over his panel, knowing that Tuvok could compose and file his average daily report in three minutes and forty six seconds. He saw the way that every two minutes or so, Tom would roll his head slightly to one side as though trying to clear his ears of water. He knew that if he was to watch Commander Chakotay, the other man would, without a doubt, let his own eyes flicker towards the captain after every couple of stabs at his own panel. He followed her around the room. And Harry also knew that if he watched carefully enough, he would be able to see the look in the captain's eyes when she glanced at her crew. He didn't like this part, because whenever she looked at him, she wasn't seeing with the eyes of a captain. They were the eyes of a child, lost, alone and so scared.
This worried Harry. He had noticed, over the last week or so, that the captain didn't appear to be mingling with the crew as well as everyone else. Commander Chakotay had made an effort to learn the names of almost everyone that he came into contact with on a regular basis, and a lot he didn't see all the time as well. The captain appeared to be struggling with this. She didn't know many of her own people, let alone the Maquis crew. He sensed that it wasn't for lack of trying but rather the fact that she didn't have the opportunity. People spoke to Commander Chakotay if they had a problem. It was his job to sort them out. On a normal mission, this was fairly understandable – the captain would be too busy with important functions and meetings to spend much time with the crew. But this was not a normal mission. They were stuck in this god forsaken quadrant for an indeterminable amount of time. If the captain didn't have people she could fall back on, she wasn't going to last.
And Harry knew that she knew this herself. B'Elanna had told him that the captain had been down to engineering on a spontaneous visit, exchanged pleasantries and then just left. She needed company. She needed to be with people. But she was so stubborn, he could tell. She would never admit that she couldn't cope on her own. Someone else would have to do something about it, but that morning Tom had told him to back off and let her run the show.
"If she wants company, she will invite us to join her," Tom had muttered.
"Yes," Harry had wanted to say, "But she won't. She's locking herself away and not giving herself a chance."
But he couldn't say it, because then Tom would know how much he watched and how much he knew about people. Wearily, Harry rested his head on his panel, just for a second. Sometimes, the gift of excellent observation was more of a curse than a gift.
***
Harry automatically straightened up as the captain entered the turbo lift beside him. In the few short weeks that he had known her, she hadn't told anyone off for slouching a bit but he wasn't prepared to take the chance. Being stuck in the Deltra Quadrant didn't mean that his standards had to drop. They exchanged a few polite words and, when they lapsed into a brief silence, Harry found himself glancing at the captain out of the corner of his eye. It suddenly struck him how small she really was; behind the uniform and on the bridge, she could hide it better but there was no denying that she was rather petite. It had never occurred to Harry that a captain could be anything less than a model stature. Starfleet didn't like you to think about it like that.
As he stepped out of the lift, on the way to Sandrine's for a night with the other senior officers, he realised that by all rights, the captain should be there as well. She may not know himself, Tom and B'Elanna that well, or even Chakotay but Tuvok would be there and he was her closest friend. It didn't seem right, somehow. She was only heading back to her quarters for dinner alone and an early night. It wasn't like she had anything better to do. He hesitated for a brief moment, almost bullying himself out of the idea, but then he remembered the look in her eyes on the bridge and how she was more child than adult, lost in something almost too big to handle. Well, Harry knew only one way to make the world seem like a friendlier place.
He turned on his heel.
"Captain, I don't mean to be out of place but if you'd like to join us, you're welcome."
The unchecked relief that flooded her face convinced Harry instantly that he had made the right decision, to reach out to this drowning person and offer them a hand. She agreed, and followed him out of the lift. As they walked down the corridor, he filled her in briefly on where they were going.
"Sounds like great fun, Mr. Kim," she smiled, touching his arm fleetingly as they got to the holodeck door, "Thank you for inviting me along."
"It's the least I could do captain. The holodeck is for everyone, after all."
She then surprised him more than anyone ever had before, "You know exactly what I meant, Harry, and don't pretend that you don't. Thank you."
And then she stepped through the door, Harry trailing half a meter behind. It looked like someone else had been blessed with the gift of excellent observation too.