"Ensign."

"Hmm?"

Harry wondered, idly, what she wanted. Maybe the ship was in dire peril and finally it was Harry's turn to save it. But then, staring at the picture of Tal's ship on the monitor, maybe letting Voyager go to hell would be a good idea, scratch that, a great idea.

"Thank you," she said, in her usual manner, like she didn't care if he responded or not

"For what?" he asked, head turned to look at her. His face was drawn in the long shadows, his hair a little tousled, looking far from happy and not very much like 'dutiful' Ensign Kim today. But that particular 'I'm okay, you're okay' brand of pretend hadn't really appealed for a long time.

Not anymore anyway, not since...

Harry shook his head, smiling. It always boiled down to the one little detail, that one little painful detail. That Seven and Tom forever detail. That look on Janeway's face whenever they were together detail. The look on B'Elanna's face...

{God, the look on B'Elanna's face...}

"You completed several of my Astrometric scans this morning."

"You're welcome. I had some time between duty shifts. Besides, it kept me occupied."

Whatever she did, however redundant she got or pedantic or excruciatingly efficient-- he always smiled at her. Always so polite and so very grateful. Long ago he decided he couldn't help it, this was Seven of Nine, this was...this was...she was...something else.

"You are attempting to distract yourself from your emotional damage," she said, nodding to the monitor that flickered in front of him, looking *down* at him in every sense.

He nodded and she took a step closer, illuminated slightly by the light from the viewport, highlighting her nose and cheekbone, the pull of her hair and it's light golden colour. Harry smiled. Tal was prettier. Tal was funnier. Tal was everything Seven of Nine wasn't. Tal was exotic and well travelled. Tal didn't sound like his alarm clock...

"I wish I could say it was working," he responded.

It hadn't been working. First, he'd tried sitting in his cabin, rigid on his sofa, staring at the wall. Then he'd tried alcohol. Lot's of it. What he couldn't handle he'd hid. Maybe for a rainy day.

That was his problem. No conviction or too many and too many for the wrong reasons, far too many.

"The treatment to relieve your condition is available--and yet you refused," she said.

If she was nurse, and wielding the Doc's old line in psychobabble and Tom's good buddy mentality as her medicine, then why did she look like there was something calculating in that pretty Borg mind of hers?

"I've got a disease," he said, nodding.

She tilted her head. Harry looked blankly at her. Wasn't she the one who'd told him that? She'd been standing in Astrometrics, watching him glow an assortment of popsical colours and she'd told him that love was a disease.

"But I'm willing to live with the symptoms," he added, gauging her reaction. He had successfully been living with a lot of things lately and throwing in a disease for good measure wouldn't hurt. Such a nice allegorical disease it was too.

{Don't fall in love, Harry, it's bad for your health.}

Wasn't that the truth? Maybe he should swap notes with Janeway. If Devoran inspectors and boyfriends back home that'd leave you for their secretaries would attest, Kathryn Janeway and Harry Kim were doomed to live their lives as the people couples looked in on to 'cheer up'.

"Doesn't make sense, does it?" he asked finally, as she viewed him with those brightly blue and wonderfully inviting eyes, head tilted.

Only in Seven's world did things have to make sense.

He used to love that about her. Back in the days when he considered wooing her with love songs translated to Borg, a Harry Kim grin, chocolate, and a bottle of Merlot. But since then certain circumstances had changed.

Very certain circumstances.

"I once assumed that romantic love was a human weakness," she said.

She moved closer to him.

"But clearly it can also be a source of strength."

From Harry's point of view, there was something quietly sickening about those ridiculously happy people. The one's with the looks, the intelligence and the happy boyfriend. You know, the ones that pontificated from every orifice on the nature of love. And how one fateful day, if he tried really, really hard, he may even settle down with Miss Right.

"My analogy was flawed," she continued, the line of her mouth softening.

It sounded like...no, couldn't be, that possibly, maybe, the most inexperienced Human on Voyager was about to sit down --Seven? Sit?-- stand there rather, and offer advice. Advice to Harry Kim, who, at last count, had been playing Human for the last twenty-seven years...and God, did it feel like playing.

"Love is not a disease," she said.

Well of course not, not for Seven of Nine. Not for happy, settled Seven. Boyfriend on her arm, Janeway playing mom, envy of every woman on the ship, ruler of all she surveyed Seven. For Seven of Nine, as Harry knew, love was one of those neat things that she'd checked of her 'To do' list. It was not one of those things that screwed you over, trod you down, and re-arranged your organs on a predictable and daily basis. It seemed trite to even think it, but Seven of Nine was lucky in love.

"If you say so," he said wearily, turning away, a subconscious 'get the hell away from me.'

"What are you viewing, Ensign?" she asked, although he doubted she was interested, probably only noting that he'd taken some Astrometrics kit without clearing it with her first.

He turned the monitor towards her. "Here," he pointed to the offensive flashing dot on the screen. "That's Tal's part of the generation ship."

She stepped closer again, studying the dot as it moved slowly across the sector, Harry had it down to memory.

"Tal, the assistant engineer, she 'infected' you. She was the one that you 'loved.'"

"Yeah, Tal," Harry smiled, liking the sound of her name on his lips again.

"Why did you allow her to depart?"

Harry looked up at her. She was staring out to the stars now, watching them flash by at warp, like she was somewhere else entirely, and for once Harry knew how she felt.

He shrugged. "Seven, sometimes things just don't work out."

She turned back to him, eyes narrow. "You loved her yet you allowed her to leave you, causing great emotional distress to you both. It is highly illogical."

It was hard not to smile. Seven of Nine the romantic? An interesting departure for her.

"I don't really think the Captain would approve of her Ops officer glowing." He shrugged again, liking it, casting off the right apathetic air in Seven's direction.

She nodded, curtly. "Tom, when I have asked him, told me that things between him and Lieutenant Torres 'did not work out.' Maybe you have sacrificed this interlude to find greater fulfilment."

So, Seven thought of herself as the step up did she? But then Harry guessed thinking yourself the 'replacement' didn't exactly do wonders for the self-confidence. But if only she'd really seen them. Paid attention before she'd even sent half a glance in Tom's direction then she'd know. And she'd have known better than to have got involved.

"Yeah, maybe." Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I never really knew, what it was, what didn't work out between the two of them."

"Lieutenant Torres did not tell you? I am aware that you were close."

{Well, I asked enough times. Funny that she didn't seem so keen to tell me. Hit me. Yes. Tell me? No.}

Harry smiled, leaning back in his chair and staring at her. He couldn't quite believe it. The tight-fitting catsuit, the blonde hair, the implants riddling her body, those bright blue eyes and he could swear Seven of Nine, of all people, was being subtle. He'd wondered if her nanoprobes were even capable.

"Close?" he asked himself more than her. "Maybe once."

He knew what he meant. From the look in her eyes she knew too. But she was itching to clarify, to spit it all out and to ask him outright what she needed to know. Seven knew he'd copulated with B'Elanna. If what they'd done even deserved such an inoffensive title.

"What occurred to change the nature of your relationship?"

"You did Seven," he sighed.

She nodded. "More specifically my attachment to Lieutenant Paris."

"Yes, you and Tom setting up house, playing nice, holding tea parties. That's what happened."

It had been a while. Harry had been trying to forget, and he guessed B'Elanna had too. But the memories came flooding back, memories of a beach, a cold sea. A look on B'Elanna's face that had him keeping his distance to this day. Hell, it was flooding back so fast he could almost smell the salt.

And he still hated himself for it, hated himself and his unique ability to mess up everything he touched.

"You engaged in intercourse with Lieutenant Torres because she still had feelings for To--Lieutenant Paris?"

Harry looked down, remembering a time when she used to call him Lieutenant Paris before Tom and wishing she still did.

"Because, I guess, she just needed comfort."

"Comfort?"

"She needed a friend."

"Yet you engaged in intercourse."

Harry nodded, glumly.

Unexpectedly, Seven pulled up a seat and sat beside him, as straight as ever.

"You did not engage in the activity to hurt Lieutenant Paris? It was not out of spite?"

Harry couldn't respond for a moment and frowned. He wished he could deny it. He wished he'd done it for better reasons. He wished he was in love with B'Elanna as he had been two years ago. He wanted to say that how Tom would react had never even entered his mind.

Fact was: he couldn't.

"Did he take it badly?"

"I believe," and then she paused, expression changing. "I believe he felt betrayed by you."

Maybe he had every right. But whatever pain Tom went through and whatever trauma Seven saw and Harry could guess at the comfort scenario they played out together. It was nothing compared to what Tom had put B'Elanna through, what B'Elanna was still going through.

"I have never understood your motives. Tom is your friend yet you betrayed him. B'Elanna is your friend yet you complicated your relationship. You refer to Ensign Cortez, Ensign Zephyr and Ensign Jenkins as 'friends' yet you have misused their affection for you."

"I guess I've really fucked up then haven't I, Seven?"

The tone was bitter, she didn't flinch.

"Yes. You have ceased to be a good friend."

"I thought I was your friend."

He smiled, a little maliciously, at her. Didn't she wonder? Just a little, didn't she ever wonder if he'd ever stopped feeling anything for her?

No, he doubted she even gave it a second thought. After all, these days Harry was merely the entrée.

"You are my friend."

"You care about my well being?" he asked, eyes low at her, scheming, against his better judgement.

"I do." She stiffened. "I cannot believe that it is good for you to...wallow."

"You're not telling me to get on with my life are you?" he asked, grinning, watching the confusion on her face as he pre-empted her little 'talk.'

"I am. There are certain things you must forget, Ensign Kim."

"Call me Harry."

"No," she said, jaw tightening and something flashing in her eyes that Harry barely recognised.

"Why?" Simple enough question, he just hated the fact that he sounded like the kid being dragged away from the candy store, or was that just the story of his life...?

"You will never be anything more than Ensign Kim to me."

A thousand dreams and fantasies, all sent, in a giant fireball, crashing towards the ground.

"Ah, just some Ops officer. That's a sobering thought, Seven, thanks for sharing."

And who the hell was Harry Kim anyway? Who the hell was Ensign Kim?

"I have come to a conclusion."

"Go on."

"Your recent behaviour is a direct affect of my involvement with Lieutenant Paris. You are jealous and behaving as such."

Jealous. Fair enough. But what the hell did either of them expect? Uncle Harry? Friendly, amiable Harry who was happy to let Seven just disappear from his life completely?

They wanted doormat Harry, the patented version. No, that wasn't it. Seven wanted the impulsive Harry. She wanted a Harry who'd jump ship to be with Tal, the type who'd get out of her idyll of a life perfectly. He wondered how Seven planned to deal with B'Elanna.

"Am I now?" he asked.

Wry amusement, that was all he could muster as she dissected his life into tiny little pieces for his perusal, and they weren't pretty pieces.

"You copulated with Lieutenant Torres for this reason. You copulated with her to hurt Tom and to tell me that you are no longer interested."

"So, if, as you say, I'm such a lost cause, why are we still talking?"

Wouldn't it be more efficient for her just to phaser him to shreds instead?

"I am your friend, Ensign."

"Offering advice?" he asked, smiling again, as if he couldn't help it, eyes tired and half closed.

"Of sorts," she said, crisply

He wasn't thinking, it could have been reflexive, it may not even have been him.

He reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. She turned, large blue eyes on his, a little wide, shock or fear, he didn't know which, but was hoping on the former.

He cupped her chin, and she leaned forward, he followed and they were mere millimetres apart, her head tilted, eyes intent.

He pressed his lips to hers, and she didn't flinch, and as she moved her head slowly it even felt as though she was responding, remote as the chance was.

This was it, this was kissing Seven of Nine...it wasn't meant to feel so cold.

She broke the kiss, still staring at him. "Do not betray Tom, again." Whispered, so lightly, that the words seemed to hang in the air.

"I'm not," he paused, gathering breath, wondering what the hell overtook him this time. "This isn't about him."

And wasn't that the truth. This is what it'd been about for the last year. Everything.

Seven of Nine. The wrong woman.

"You underestimate your friendships," she said, standing.

"Maybe I want to," he shot as she walked away. That perfectly sculpted spine to him as she walked straight out of the Mess Hall and right back to Tom. Exactly where she was meant to be.

She turned to him and he could swear, damn her, a woman who had trouble smiling was pitying him, etched into her eyes and her lips - pity and all for him. "Do not be weak, Ensign Kim."

"You don't understand." He stood and moved to her. "Seven, you just don't understand."

She didn't. She had everything. Everything. She even had him - all she had to do was ask. And that weakness, that vulnerability sickened him. He was weak. And she knew it. She knew it all those weeks ago standing in the Mess Hall and asking him, big blue eyes - not to tell Tom. Telling him that it would 'sabotage' her happiness. And factors indicated that he cared more about her happiness than his own.

"I understand more than you believe I do. I am not naïve, Ensign."

{No - not naïve. Manipulative?}

"I could tell Tom."

He looked at her blankly. There it was - the delicious little threat that had been playing in his mind since she strode into the Mess. He could tell Tom everything. He could ruin her pretty little life with one forwarded message. He could do it with a press of a button. He could do it.

"You will not tell Lieutenant Paris about my confidential PADDs."

"Because?"

He knew why. He just wanted to see her articulate it. Spew out the details and set up the real state of play. What was the score anyway? He knew he was losing. Pulling his punches even before he threw them.

"I love him."

He looked at his shoes. And she did, didn't she? That was one hell of a fact to navigate a fantasy around. And she was happy too. Harry'd told B'Elanna, once, that it wasn't meant to be like this. That some huge mistake had been made when some omnipotent had started doling out fate parcels to the crew of the good ship Voyager. And sometimes, when he looked at her, or them both - he wondered if everything was so wrong. She was happy. Not with Harry. But happy. And this was their reality. Nothing would ever change that.

"Get well, soon," she said, turning away.

She left. Harry stood alone.

Fitting really.

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