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"Ensign Kim is dead."
B'Elanna's voice rang across the bridge, even over the chaos going on around them. At least it did to Tom. It was all he could hear. Even though there were so many alarms and other noises filling the bridge. Including more from B'Elanna.
For her proclamation was quickly followed by more information. Only some of which Tom was hearing. It was about Kes he thought. But her first statement upon calling the bridge was all that Tom could focus on, other than what he had to do from his console. Even if nothing on the screens meant anything to him in that moment.
"Ensign Kim is dead."
The words ran through his head again and again while he tried to do his job. Harry dead. His best friend was dead. Dead in a seemingly random patch of space, from a hull breech caused by something unknown. Died while trying to save his crew from more hardship. The only person on the ship that truly cared about Tom was dead. The person who had gone out of his way to make sure that Tom wasn't alone on that ship or isolated from the others.
The person he cared the most about in the galaxy was dead.
He didn't have time to mourn then. He didn't even have time to truly let himself absorb the information. Because no sooner than the shock was passing him and he could try and think again, he was being ordered to get a tricorder and help the Doctor in medical. He left with the others, the bridge being evacuated from another hull breech, separating from them within moments of leaving.
Whatever was happening to them wasn't getting better, only worse. More deaths seemed imminent. But the first was Harry.
Tom made it to the triage area that the Doctor had set up and got to work treating his the injuries that his crew mates had sustained. There were so many of them. He didn't have much time to think with how many were injured. It was one person to the next, over and over and over again. But there was a part of him that hoped the next person he looked at would be Harry.
Even though Tom knew that there was no chance of that. Harry's body was lost to space. Pulled out of the ship by the vacuum. Killed by the very thing he had worked tirelessly to avoid happening to any of them. Not even a chance to survive.
Whatever was causing the ship to be bombarded and damaged over and over stopped. Things began to settle as the lack of new damage made injuries slow. Soon enough the Doctor didn't need Tom anymore. He still helped until he was called to the temporary bridge in engineering.
The walk gave him time to think. If they made it through the current situation Tom was going to have to figure things out for Harry. He thought he would be able to convince the Captain to let him be the one to clear out Harry's quarters, to decide what should be kept and what should be reclaimed. She knew how close they were.
There was also the need to notify his loved ones. Sure there was no contact with the Alpha Quadrant, but they always wrote something to be delivered when there would be a chance. Tom would write something to go with the official notification he thought.
He didn't know what he was going to do without his best friend. Tom would have to find someway to keep going.
In engineering he heard the bombshell. There was another Voyager. The turbulence they had felt leaving the plasma drift had created two Voyagers in exactly the same place. There were two of all of them. One on his Voyager and one on the other.
There was a Voyager where Harry was still alive. There was a Tom that hadn't yet felt the pain of knowing what it felt like to have to hear that Harry was dead. To know that he was going to have to live alone on a ship where no one trusted him.
And that Voyager was the reason that his Harry had died. It was a weird feeling, knowing that it was a different version of them had caused the whole mess. That in a small twist of fate it would have been them that nearly destroyed that other Voyager.
There was time when all he had to do was watch and be ready if he was needed. The ship wasn't going anywhere and a pilot wasn't needed. But he had to be ready. Which meant he couldn't do what he wanted and go start to mourn. Though could he really knowing that there was another Harry that was alive.
Was that really his Harry? Or was it another person that only looked like his friend?
It wouldn't be long that he would have to think about that. That Tom would have to worry. Because if he knew his captain, she was plotting something. likely to destroy their broken and damaged ship to save the other Voyager. It was what she would always do in their situation.
The sensors picked up a Vidiian ship. Which was a worse way to go than blown to bits in a warp core breech. Only they weren't the ones that were being boarded. It was the other Voyager. They were the ones under attack and Tom didn't know what to do.
He couldn't stay on that temporary bridge. So he did the only thing he could and went back to helping the Doctor with the wounded. He wouldn't have to think there. He would have more than enough distractions from everything and everyone. Even his own mind.
Soon there would only be one Voyager. And now he was sure it would be theirs. The one that didn't have Harry on it. And Tom was going to have to learn how to be without Harry.