A little dark and angsty one-shot set after the events of 'Deadlock'.
There is something cathartic in the way the engines groan, and the stars pass by, he muses, as he tosses for the hundredth time that night.
Voyager is humming along, back to their usual warp speed. The seconds tick on by.
He counts them in his head, then out aloud.
He counts the minutes, and then the hours.
He tries to count the stars, and then he tries to count the number of planets they've seen.
But, thoughts keep going around, taunting him in a way that reminds him how easy it was for him to nearly die today.
How easy it was for the other Kathryn Janeway to give that order.
How easy it was going to be for them to hurt each other with those simple words.
Self-destruct.
And, he thinks sardonically, that it shouldn't be that way.
Their crew has changed so much, and in the last twelve hours there has been a subtle shift in the way they see each other, and themselves.
In the same way, they now see the 'other' Harry Kim, fresh from his trip across the rift ready to continue a life, like he hadn't just died in their world.
Fleeting, and destructible.
Easily replaceable.
Terminated in the blink of an eye with a single order from their Captain.
Authorisation Janeway Pi One-One-Zero.
He still can't sleep, and the hours are ticking by as the other Voyager still haunts him in a way he can't comprehend. The words of her destructive moments echo around in his head, and he hopes to whatever God is listening that they won't be the final words he hears from her beautiful mouth when his time is up.
Sighing, he gives up on sleep and paces his quarters. He knows he shouldn't, but it's like a part of him that's constantly being pulled toward her, and he just has to seek her out.
He needs her to soothe his soul.
The same way a band-aid can soothe a terminal illness.
He pads softly through the corridors, the rustle of his loose pants the only thing echoing from the walls off the immaculate bulkheads.
The immaculate bulkheads of her ship.
The scars from the battle hours earlier are now gone; their lack of a presence haunting him in a way that he can't understand.
If only their personal scars could be cleared away so quickly.
He thinks that they are going to have a lot more by the time they make it home.
If they make it home.
The cool, temperature-controlled environment makes the fine hairs on his arm stand up, and the thin shirt he'd thrown on does little to quell the rising need to cover himself in a way that will protect him from the conversation he is about to have.
The conversation they need to have.
He makes it to the threshold of her chamber. Her hide-out, hidden deep within the bowels of the ship where he learnt early on she comes to torture herself within the confines of her own mind. To rehearse those moments, over and over, where she questions every command decision she's ever made.
And tortures herself in ways he can't possibly understand.
He thinks somehow that her personal decisions weigh just as heavily on her mind.
The room is hidden away, with a large window and a couch for a single person, or maybe two. The door is so small he'd missed it the first time he came in search of her.
An area that the ship designers didn't know what to do with so they left it half-finished and called it something pretentious.
He thinks it suits his captain down to the ground.
She is standing away from him, hair free down the length of her spine with the silken nightgown feathering her ankles. It's the same damn nightgown she wears in his dreams.
He spares a brief thought for how she managed to walk down the corridors looking like that. Voyager has not quite settled into the lull of sleep, and listless crew mull through the ship.
They aren't the only two that can't sleep tonight.
He watches her for a moment in the darkness of the shadows, content to be unobserved, and feels the courage flow into him in a way he couldn't quite control.
'I can hear you breathing,' she says simply, and just like that he is caught.
He wastes no time. The question is burning on his tongue and he has to know.
'Would you have done it?' his voice asks through the silence. The accusation in the words is hard to hide.
She stiffens, but doesn't turn. The stars are flashing by; the light seemingly avoiding her face and shrouding her in the darkness he knows will one day consume her.
And he will be powerless to stop it.
'Done what?' she feigns indifference.
He thinks bitterly that it doesn't suit her.
Killed us all.
'Destroyed Voyager,' he states. This time the accusation is there without premise.
He doesn't finish the rest of the question, but the inference is heard. With you on board.
She faces him fully, and looks him in the eye. His courage surges again, and he steps forward into the underground, and further into her hide-out.
And he feels like he just agreed to be buried alive with her.
'Yes.'
The finality in her word takes him by surprise.
He wants to ask her why. He wants to scream and shake her until this damned tiny woman of a Captain sees the sense he's been trying to subtly pound into her since their journey began.
It's in those moments he looks at her, her face now unguarded and seemingly so young that he realises she is always going to have this penchant for self-sacrifice.
And he is always going to be the one to stand in her way.
Together, they are going to go down. Regardless of whether or not she makes the decision to end her own life aboard Voyager, leaving him to pick up the pieces of his own shattered world.
A world without her.
He wonders in those moments where she learnt to hate herself so much.
He'd heard the rumours as to why; her personal life in ruins with a fiancé and a father buried at the bottom of a glacier; and later, a second fiancé left far behind in the Alpha Quadrant.
Two men she'd loved now lost to the perils of time and space.
He seriously wondered if he'd end up being the third.
But until she exposed that secret part of her being, and told him herself, he'd pretend he didn't know anything about the life she'd left behind.
She continues to stare him, challenging him to question her orders.
To demand a reason as to why she would sacrifice herself so willingly.
Only he doesn't.
And he doesn't think he ever will be able to without feeling immense pain.
This woman has wound her way into his soul, and her darkness is beginning to pull at him.
It keeps him from sleep, and it keeps him from her.
One day, he hopes he can be the light she so desperately needs to chase the darkness that seeps through her bones, threatening to consume her.
It's the lie he tells himself. It's the reason he knows without a doubt that he'd sacrifice himself to save her.
Because somehow, impossibly so, he loves this woman.
He never imagined love could bring such pain.
She watches him, blue eyes shining brightly against the stark contrast of her pale face.
He may not be the first man she has loved.
But he knows that he will be the last, because, one day he is going to die with her.
"Don't look over your shoulder
Cos that's just the ghost of me you're seeing in your dreams" – Daughtry: 'Ghost of Me' [Playlist]