Voyager - Year 7
"Captain Janeway?" Harry asked in the weekly meeting. His voice had no inflection to it, but there was no underlying anger, which was usually the case when he got this way.
"Yes Ensign Potter?"
He reached up and removed the last of his pips from his uniform. "I realize that in a time of emergency, you can refuse a request to muster out, and that the attempt to get back to Earth qualifies as such an emergency. I am returning my pips to you as a statement of intent to muster out of Starfleet the moment we return to Earth. I'm tired of it all."
"What brought this on?" Chakotay asked.
"Everything. I've been able to mourn Hermione, and I find that I really like Ann - Annika - as a person. You call her Hermione, but I can't; not just yet, so we agreed to remember her body donor in name, at least. She's been astonishingly forgiving of my treatment of her. By rights I should be eating through a straw due to how I acted toward her." He shook his head. "It was a good idea to give her other quarters, but now that I know she's been here all along, I paradoxically miss her all the more."
He sighed. "But the last two or three years, as well as other stuff I remember seeing on the Enterprise and in the records … it just seems that Starfleet really trains you to care about the other guy more than yourself. We get threatened by some species or other, and we bend over backwards to help them out, especially when they won't appreciate what we did, it seems. I understand not wanting to fight our way through a sector or quadrant, but damn me if it doesn't feel like we're trying to tell the universe that we don't matter; just our opponents do."
He stood. No one questioned this because experience showed them that he thought better on his feet. "Then there's things like that damned memorial we ran into a couple months ago. I like you a lot, Neelix, but damn me if I didn't want to hospitalize you for arguing for repowering that evil thing. The race that built that stupid thing committed a worse atrocity than killing the people on that planet - they forced everyone who goes near there to experience their own guilt over the incident! I have survivor's guilt over an incident that happened before I was born, no matter whether you count my years or my actual birth date! How many of the crew are experiencing post-traumatic stress because of that thing?" He spun on Janeway. "And you decided it was a good idea to idea to fund that atrocity of theirs with more power! We should have just let the damned battery die in it!"
He sat. "Throw me in the brig or give me solitary or whatever for speaking out of turn, but I just don't give a fuck anymore, flying or otherwise. I'm tired of it. I used to think that Starfleet was something noble and wonderful, after talking to Admiral Jaaymeson, but I'm realizing that I was just talking myself into it, because I was happy to see that some family that I knew in the 20th century had survived until today."
He stood again and walked over to the transparent aluminum window. "I've lost everything, Captain. I lost my home by coming here, I lost my chance at romance with a girl because, if I do get back to the 20th century, she gets to become so much antimatter vapour. I programmed her holo-version too well, because she came alive, and I fell in love with her. Then she died. Now she's back, sort of, but I screwed the pooch so badly on how I treated her that I doubt we can ever be a couple again. I've nothing left anymore. No family, no hope of a family, no friends. Starfleet is just . . . I can't be bothered to care, Captain. I'll help get us home, but then I'm done." He left the briefing without being dismissed.
Janeway picked up that last uniform pip and stared at it for a long moment. "Where did we go wrong?" she finally asked.
"In hindsight, a lot of places," Harry Kim finally said. "We all wanted him to get to know that Hermione was still here, but we did it right on the tail of her … well, let's call it an abduction … by Seven of Nine. What he heard was that we didn't give a damn about her as a person. And throwing the two of them together so often?" He grimaced. "Apologies, Captain, but that was probably not the best way to handle the situation."
"I believe that Mr Potter is suffering exactly what he stated," the Doctor said. "Post-traumatic stress disorder. Between the memorial – and remember that he was the most vociferous when it happened about not giving it a new battery – and the losses that he has taken, I doubt that he was ever given good counseling. Yes, he spoke with Deanna Troi several times while aboard the Enterprise, but a few one hour talks with a counsellor can't deal with something that deep. He has lost his time, his friends, and his family. And we have done nothing to help him properly recover."
"He's seemed so happy before the incident with Hermione and Seven," Tom said.
"He likely was," the Doctor replied. "But the loss of her yet again was likely a trigger for the trauma that he has been experiencing, and visiting upon us as well."
"And my reaction to the loss of Hermione's holographic form prior to the discovery of her overwhelming the effectively non-existent personality of the Borg drone was certainly not one of my shining moments. I've made up for it in some ways, like trying to help you, Doctor, rather than erase part of your memories yet again. But I've done nothing for Harry, really." She looked around the table. "That needs to change. First off - Doctor. I need you to start treating him for post-traumatic stress if you can. Feel free to use anyone in the crew that you feel would be useful. Maybe it's self-serving, but he's been an exemplary officer for years. Let's show Starfleet that these past three years were a fluke, rather than the new normal."
"Given how you reacted to Icheb's offer, Harry, I suspect you need to have a long conversation with Ann, as you call her," the doctor said to Ensign Potter.
Harry rubbed his hand across the back of his neck in embarrassment. "Uh, yeah. I did get rather … expressive … in my thanks, didn't I?"
"I believe the word you are searching for is 'exuberant'," the doctor told with with no little amusement coloring his voice.
"Well, ever since my surgery for recto-cranial inversion, I've come to understand why everyone likes her so much. There's just so much of Hermione in there."
"That's what we've been trying to tell you, Ensign." The doctor scowled. "On a separate note, I would appreciate it if your holodeck simulations would include more Skinner and less skinning. I don't believe that this tendency to punish yourself physically is a very healthy response."
Harry frowned. "Yeah, you're probably right. I suspect that the Dursleys had more far-reaching effects on me than I once thought." He paused. "I suspect that Skinner might not be better to cure me of the need for punishment, since he was a behavioral psychologist. And Freud tied everything back to sex. Not everything is because you wanted to have sex with your mother or father or pet lobster."
The doctor looked at him for a long moment before saying, "I suspect that is a series of data banks I'd be best off not exploring."
"If you do find anything about it, don't tell me," Harry replied. "I made it up."
"I'm glad. Frankly, any other option would have worried me, although the fact that you came up with the concept probably should worry me." The doctor smiled slightly to let him know he was joking. "Now I think you should see if Miss … if Ann is available."
"You can call her Miss Granger, Doc. I'm not going to be offended or have it hit my grief buttons."
Ann was engrossed in something when Harry entered Astrometrics; so much so that she didn't even register his arrival. She had the photo of Hermione with her arm around Harry. "I am so damned jealous of you, girl," she murmured. "You're the one I was based on, and when we get back, I'll have to watch him be with you. And it doesn't help that he wrote me as bisexual, since I can understand exactly why the thought of you tightens his uniform."
She let loose with a little sob. "And he'll never know that I'm the girl he wrote. Seven had no personality, and was too damned good at her hacking. I overwrote her completely, but he'll never accept that. Because I love him, though, I'll do what I can to make sure you survive. He loves you."
She shook her head. "I just wish I could figure out how to reverse the transfer. I think he'd accept me as a hologram that managed to free herself from the meat shell that entrapped her and took forever to escape from."
It was then that everything clicked for him - her fingernail chewing when nervous; her tendency to huff "Honestly" at someone who didn't think something all the way through; her tendency to print out her reports in paper form, even if she was going to recycle them later; the odd looks he kept catching from her when she thought he wasn't looking – it all pointed to the dominant personality in that body being Hermione Granger.
Taking a deep breath, he walked forward after she closed the picture. "You seem worried, Hermione," he said as nonchalantly as he could. "Care to talk about it?"
"Nothing you can really help me with, Ensign Pott … wait, what did you call me?"
"Your idiot of an ex-boyfriend must be improving. It only took me three years to figure out what a thundering moron he is. If he were smarter, he'd have realized a long time ago that he's been breaking Hermione Granger's heart for the past three-plus years. He's kinda hoping that someday she can find it in that heart to forgive his - MMPH!" It ended that way because he now had arm armful of cobalt-suited woman who was kissing him rather thoroughly.
Tom Paris entered the Astrometrics lab to find an amusing sight – Harry was holding up Hermione Granger. Her legs were wrapped around his waist, and he had a death grip on her rather shapely posterior. He suspected that they had either just started, or had learned to breathe through their noses when kissing.
Five minutes had passed without a break when he cleared his throat, in awe of their staying power. "Hate to break up the reunion, kiddies, but we do have a job to do."
"He's right," she said in a rather breathless voice. "We're going to continue this conversation later, Harry." Her voice brooked no argument, and her look promised that he'd enjoy continuing the conversation.
"It should be interesting when they decode the messages back at Starfleet," Janeway said. "You're certain that this holographic Reginald Barclay means us harm?"
"That's not the Reg I knew on Enterprise," Harry said. "I don't know who has been tweaking that program, but Reg was never that . . . I don't trust him."
"And that's why we deactivated him," Chakotay said. "I remember Seska and how you disliked her. And you were right, so I'm trusting you this time."
"And might I say 'Welcome back', Lieutenant Potter," Janeway said.
"Wasn't it Ensign, Captain?" he asked.
"As I recall, the incident that led to your demotion was a symptom of your disorder. Once you began to get some form of treatment, you returned to the exemplary officer that you had always been previously. I'm raising you to Lieutenant again, with the understanding that you will seek help faster next time."
"Well, if my friends will promise to continue surgical reversal of recto-cranial inversion syndrome, I'm certain I can manage that." He stood. "Last time I did this, I was mocking you. You didn't deserve that." He saluted her crisply.
She smiled and returned it. "Thank you, Lieutenant."
"Thanks for vouching for me, Harry," the new holographic Barclay said. "Apparently the Ferengi got my hologram - this one, Mark I, you might say - and were going to kill you – and by that I mean Voyager - in order to make a profit off Borg nanoprobes."
"I'm stepping back on my bloodthirsty impulses, but damn me if I don't want to hurt them badly." He grinned. "Maybe find all their money and vaporise it in front of them."
"Oh, you're nasty," Barclay said with a laugh. "Isn't that sort of torture against several treaties?"
"Yeah, but I never signed those treaties!" Harry replied with a laugh. He shook his head. "Damn. I never intended to, knowing that I was returning to the 20th century someday, but I made a lot of friends. And you're one of them, Reg. I want you to send that back to your meat counterpart the next time you talk to Starfleet. I probably would have gone crazy a long time ago without your help."
"And I'm glad you were there to help me get away from my holodeck addiction. Having a friend to fall back on - a real, meat one, as you call it - was a life-saver, and I mean that literally."
"Well, now you're a hologram yourself."
Barclay looked at him for a moment. "I think a lot of people would like to study the process by which a program can gain sentience. There's the Moriarty one, Voyager's Doctor, and your girlfriend. I'm specialised to do it on purpose, so that I can be just like the meat version of Reg and think exactly like him and not how the computer thinks the meat version would act. But Hermione came by it naturally. Organically, you might say. And that's a field of study worth really looking at."
"Get the two of them together if I ever actually do make it back to the 20th century and set them both on the concept." He shook his head. "Merlin. The two smartest woman I've ever known are the same girl. I wonder how they'd react to each other."
Reg blinked for a second. "Dibs on the popcorn concession for the catfight."