by Bingley
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Archiving: PKSP & ASCEML. Elsewhere, please ask me first. I'm unlikely to say no.

Feedback: gimme, gimme.

Disclaimer: Paramount owns Voyager and all who sail in her. This is just for fun, not to infringe their copyright or make a profit.

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So what exactly is wrong with this picture? Here am I, Tom Paris, the hero of the hour, returning after having exposed a spy and got the ship out of a Kazon trap, and people are avoiding me as if I had the phage. The Captain wants a preliminary oral report on what happened right now and I haven't even had a chance to see Harry yet. He hasn't come looking for me, either, but it's not surprising, we didn't exactly part on the best of terms. Still, once he knows what was really going on, I'll be able to spend the rest of my life making it up to him in the best possible way.

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She's not even listening. I don't think she heard a single word of my report. Come on, say something. You called me here.

"Tom. I think you need to see this."

She beckons me round to look at her view screen, pushes a few buttons and then lets me sit down while she goes over to the other side of the room.

Harry appears on the screen. God, he looks awful. His eyes are all red and swollen as if he's been crying for a very long time. His voice is ragged as if his throat hurts, and it sounds as if he's drunk a little too much.

"Captain," he says. He takes a deep breath and starts again. "Captain. It started one night when Tom and I were talking in his quarters. It was just like any other night, we'd talked of this and that for hours, and I was going to go back to my quarters. I got as far as his door, when he put his hand out to stop me, pulled me back, and kissed me.

"I was a bit surprised at first, but it felt so right, you know, and so I kissed back and then one thing led to another and I ended up spending the night, and most of the next day as well - just as well as we both had the day off."

He stops, his face lights up for a while, a secret smile as he remembers. I can't help but smile as I remember as well. I glance over at the Captain. She's watching me, even though she's pretending to be reading some PADDs.

"We had a marvellous week. He never actually said he loved me, he didn't need to. Every look, every touch, every smile told me he loved me, or at least I thought it did."

Oh it did, Harry, it did.

"Then he changed. First he asked if he could borrow some replicator rations for a special project. Of course I said yes, but I never got them back. Soon he was 'borrowing' some every day. Then he wanted some extra holodeck time. A couple of times I refused to give him any rations and holodeck time. When I did, he just left, and wouldn't speak to me or have anything to do with me until I gave in - and I always did. I knew he was using me, playing me along for what he could get but just sometimes I would see in his eyes the Tom I'd known and loved before this other Tom took over again.

"I heard stories about his gambling and fighting. He was taking women on special holodeck programs, and never the same woman twice. I could see in Sandrine's that he was drinking too much. I tried to stop him, to make him see what he was doing to himself, but he'd just push me away.

"Our private time together just deteriorated into arguments. Eventually he'd just come to my quarters, we'd have sex and then he'd go again. The sex wasn't even that good. All the love had gone out of it. Then came that terrible night in Sandrine's. He'd had too much to drink again - he must have. He starting yelling that he was sick of me mooning over him like a lovesick puppy and other things I can't bear to think of, and right in front of everyone as well.

"When he left there was just me, and Neelix and Kes to see him off. I think he'd managed to alienate just about everybody else. Just for an instant when he left the old Tom appeared in his eyes and I gave him a hug. But it didn't last."

Oh God, he's crying again.

"He's gone now. And I'll never know. Did he ever love me or was he just stringing me along for what he could get? Captain, one last thing. When you get back home, if my parents are alive, don't let them know what a miserable fuck-up their son was."

Harry swore! Harry never swears. If he says "fuck" it's because he's talking about fucking, it's not an expletive.

"Tom." Janeway's hand on my arm.

"Captain?"

"Tuvok picked up the phaser fire in Harry's quarters on his sensors, but by the time we got there it was too late. My official log shows that he died fighting the Kazon."

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End