***
Walking into sickbay was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. Janeway had received a 24 hour reprieve from having to think about what she had found in her ready room, and when Chakotay had questioned her about it initially she simply replied that there were more pressing matters to attend to. Now those matters were taken care of, and her crew had fallen into the graceful pattern of a competent and trusted team. Minus four members, though, which brought Janeway's mind back to other unpleasant realities.
One of those realities had come in the form of a message from the EMH, blinking steadily and patiently on her desktop screen when she was forced to retire to her quarters by a very adamant Chakotay.
The EMH's ageless face appeared on her screen, a slightly perturbed look gracing his sometimes acetic features. "Captain, I must warn you of a very serious problem that I have found residing in my program." His face twisted wryly, "Or, rather, did reside in my program."
Usually the Doctor was over protective of his programming to the point of absurdity, so the fact that tampering with it brought a thin smile to the physician's face startled Janeway.
"It came to my attention when Kes was here that it would be prudent to do a self diagnostic to assure that I was in perfect health, so to speak. I assure you that before I worked on Mr. Kim I gave my programming a surface scan, and Kes was overseeing my procedures constantly."
Something of the Doctor's statement snagged in Janeway's mind. While the image of the EMH gathered a breath she mouthed the word 'Kim' wonderingly. So that was his name. She had never bothered to remember. For some reason it felt like an egregious transgression on her part now.
"Getting back to the point, before re-installing the subroutines deleted, Kes persuaded me to check and see exactly what each one did. Curiosity about myself drove me to agree with Kes, and with a bit of ingenuity on our part we discovered what the subroutines did." Appreciation lit his eyes and he stared fondly behind him presumably at the assistant he spoke so highly of. "One of the subroutines was a precisely guided deletion program. This puzzled both Kes and I until we donned our detective hats and discovered what had been deleted from my memory by this program."
The Doctor leaned closer to his own screen, as if afraid that Janeway would miss his point should he not be as much in her face as the screen allowed. "The files deleted had to do with the alterations to my program pertaining to Mr. Kim. According to those files, there was absolutely nothing wrong, physically, mentally, emotionally, or otherwise, with Mr. Kim that would be attributed to his heritage. In layman's terms, Captain," the Doctor's eyes bored straight into her heart, "there is no reason that Mr. Kim could not be as much a helpful member of society as you or me." His caustic cynicism struck again, "Well, you at least. I can only surmise that the subroutines that were deleted by accident were initially installed due to bigotry on the part of either my creator or Starfleet. Every time I would do a scan on Mr. Kim the subroutine would activate, deleting the true findings of my examination with pre-programmed false data to keep Mr. Kim in indefinite bondage.
"Of course, you may have already deduced this yourself, since I was informed by Kes that Mr. Neelix had already told you of Mr. Kim's pivotal role in the re-taking of this ship. Specialized technical knowledge was needed to accomplish those tasks Captain, and there is every indication that Mr. Kim completed those tasks. I suggest that you study your own records, as I am sure they will corroborate my theory. What you do after that is your own affairs, but as a physician I am bound not to harm sentient life. What has happened in the past with the falsifying of Mr. Kim's documents falls under harm in my remaining programming, so I will not be an accomplice any longer."
The revelation had caused her to rock back in her chair, aghast at the implications. The second thing she did was hail the computer. She needed Chakotay's guidance then, and with their discoveries he had persuaded her to stand outside the doors she was facing now. Upon sensing her approach, the door slid open admitting her to sickbay, and signing two fates.
For the greater part of the time he had spent in sickbay Harry had spent his time unconscious. Unable to cope with everything, he eventually had to be sedated so the Doctor and Kes could treat his various wounds. Unluckily for Janeway he had been revived, and his stare silently followed her as she walked towards him.
This was a Harry that Janeway had never seen before. He knew he could no longer pretend, could no longer lie, and therefore didn't try to hide the truth. It startled her how deep, soulful, and intelligent his chocolate eyes looked, now that she found herself staring into them. He had a look on his face that easily would have fit on a man staring down his execution squad: showing no fear, no regret, just the cool composure that comes with the knowledge that a life is going to end.
Most likely Kes' doing, he had a new, freshly replicated outfit on that looked as sterile as the sickbay walls that surrounded him. As he turned ever so slightly to follow her movements she saw the shallow phantoms of pain cross his face and guilt struck her again. He seemed like a totally different person, here in this environment, looking clean, calm, and brave. She had never seen him with a crisp gold shirt tucked neatly into regulation Starfleet pants and shined black boots. It unnerved her with how human he truly looked.
"Harry, I don't know where to begin," Janeway admitted. "I-We have been so wrong for so long. Why didn't you tell us?"
His eyes lit with understanding, anticipation of her question not making his response sound any less sincere. "I tried, once, only once. After that I was afraid of what would happen if I ever tried again." His eyes emitted feelings of hurt, pain, and understanding far beyond his years, trying to communicate the desperation he had felt.
"Someone hurt you simply because you said-what? That you could understand the workings of a console? That you could pilot a shuttle?" Janeway couldn't understand the maliciousness implied.
The mended-but-not-fixed young man's gaze slid from hers, his mouth staying closed and unwilling to answer. There were some habits that couldn't be broken as easily. There were so many times when he had done something with the conviction that it was right. Still more frequently he found himself being hurt because of those convictions and eventually he found that he could not speak out anymore.
Janeway moved closer, placing both hands on the edge of the Asian's bed, convinced that she couldn't just let the subject drop. "Harry, you're far away from those people and those places now. I wish you had told me."
He was not put off by her placations. Raising his eyes once again to hers, in a tone suffused with innocence, he questioned, "Buy why wouldn't you react the way everyone else did? Why wouldn't you be one of the people who installed that subroutine in the Doctor's program? I was not alone in being the way I am. I knew many other people in the same position I was, and none of them ever received anything other than the life that every other person like me had. They were smarter and better than I was. Why was I supposed to believe that I had a chance when they didn't? What guarantee did I have that you would be any different than every other person I had known before?"
Forcing herself not to be surprised by the information he knew, nor offended by his questions, Janeway couldn't help but feel like she had to stifle the reflex to avoid the answer on pretense that there was no way he could understand. Shoving the idea of dodging the answer with a force reserved for utterly appalling objects, Janeway searched for an answer. She couldn't find one. "None," she admitted. "And it's harder than you could imagine for me to say that."
He nodded, sympathy on his face. Sympathy for her? Why? She didn't understand how he could pity her after everything she had done to him. Maybe he wasn't simply her equal; perhaps he was more of a person. "Apology accepted," he said, knowing that was what she wanted, no, needed, to hear.
After being a Captain for as long as she had, Janeway could tell when someone was humoring her. "No, that's not enough. I want to try and fix what I've done. I talked to Commander Chakotay, Lieutenant Torres, and Tom Paris." She didn't miss Harry's small smile at the last name she mentioned which he tried, too late, to wrestle under control. "We've decided that we are going to help you learn whatever you want. You seem to have a knack for engineering, and Torres said she would be happy to help you in any way she could. If," she looked at him sternly, "that's what you really want."
"Yes," there was no hesitation in the patient's answer. "I would."
"Tom offered to show you around, teach you the 'finer points of being a Starfleet officer' I believe were his exact words. He wants to help you fit in, probably because he knows more than any of us what it is like to be looked down upon."
"He wants to be my friend?" Harry's eyes lit up with wonder. Like Neelix when introduced to new culinary tastes, he didn't seem to know what to do or where to start.
"Yeah, I wanna be your friend, you got a problem with that?" Tom Paris swept in the room; bursting into the conversation with the lack of tact he was known for.
Harry looked in awe at his newest visitor whilst trying to figure out exactly what was being implied. Janeway blossomed into an irrepressible smile. "What's your answer, Cadet?"
"I don't know what to say…."The overload of sudden compassion and caring about himself, of all people, confused him to no bounds.
"I do," Paris announced, sharing a secret look with Kes. It wasn't pure happenstance that he had shown up at the time that he did. Still, he wanted to be here. "Say whatever you want."
For the first time in his life that he could remember, Harry Kim made a decision for himself unafraid of any adverse consequences because he, for some reason, was convinced that he could trust these two people. "Yes."