Desillusions
Harry Kim was not having a good day. He had deleted the star charts that Seven of Nine had been working on and the Captain had not been pleased. In fact, she had yelled at him and threatened to throw him in the brig if he didn't get the matter solved within the hour. Harry had been on the receiving end of Captain Janeway's bad moods before, but this time had been far worse than others. "If I didn't know better," his friend Tom Paris had commented, "I'd say she didn't get any last night."
Harry was especially sensitive to Janeway's disapproval of him. She had more or less taken over the role of his mother when they got lost in the Delta Quadrant and Harry wanted nothing more than to please her. He did not understand what had brought on her raving. He would simply go to astrometrics, download the charts and transmit them to his bridge workstation. It would take him no more than half an hour.
"Ensign Kim," Seven of Nine said when he entered astrometrics, "how may I be of assistance?"
"I accidentally deleted those charts we transmitted earlier, Seven," he answered. "I need to do it again."
"Very well," Seven said. "You may use my workstation, I will go to the bridge and receive the files there."
"Thank you, Seven, that is very helpful."
Why she wanted to walk all the way to the bridge for something that could so easily done by Harry himself, he did not quite understand. But it would save some time, so he wasn't going to complain.
But Harry was just not himself today. Distracted as he was by Janeway's
reaction to his earlier mistake, he soon realized he was transmitting the wrong
charts to the bridge. "Damn," he said, "I really need to start paying attention
again."
Shortly after, Seven's workstation indicated an incoming message.
"Seven must have noticed I transmitted the wrong charts," Harry thought, "how
thoughtful of her not to blast it over the internal comm system and spare me
further humiliation."
Despite the negative attitude of most crewmembers toward the former Borg drone,
Harry had always had a weak spot for her. He considered her to be his friend.
So he opened the message. Something that, in hindsight, he wished he hadn't.
"Dearest Seven," the message started, and that point Harry knew he should not continue reading. But he did anyway, curious as he was as to whom might be calling Seven "dearest".
"I am eternally sorry for our misunderstanding last night. I did not mean to
implicate that you are sexually inadequate. You fulfill my needs more than any
person, male or female, ever could. Please know that I love you with every fiber
of my being. Please forgive me, my love.
Forever yours, Kathryn."
Harry almost fainted. There was only one Kathryn on board this vessel and the
thought of his surrogate mother and his would-be girlfriend together, just made
him plain nauseous.
There had been rumours going on about the Captain and Seven of Nine, but Harry
had always been the one to counterattack them. Any degradation of character of
either one of them was something Harry simply could not tolerate. Up until now,
that is.
"I guess Tom was right, after all." he mumbled.
He realized he could never tell his friend that though. Knowing full well that the Captain would probably toss him out the nearest airlock if she ever found out he had seen her message. If Seven didn't kill him first.
So he closed the message and changed its status to 'unread'. After which he logged off the workstation and worked his way back to the bridge.
Not knowing how he could ever face his Captain again.
Especially since he had forgotten to transmit the missing star charts to the bridge.