Tom entered the mess hall with a certain amount of trepidation, eyes scanning the crowd of faces before finally settling on Harry. His friend had chosen a corner table near the viewport, staring out into space with a small frown. He had a perfect view of the Battlestar Galactica from here, and his eyes remained trained on the derelict ship.

Harry had been acting strangely from the moment Tom had arrived to retrieve him. Tom didn't know the specifics of the other man's meeting with Captain Janeway, only that it hadn't gone well for the Ensign.

Of all the people Tom knew, Harry was the last one who would go against the captain's orders, or even talk back to her. He had his moments, of course - all of the senior staff did from time to time. The incident with the generational ship and their assistant Engineer Tal, for example. Harry hadn't been afraid to speak his mind to the captain then. But that had been different; he had been affected the pheramones her people excreted during intercourse, forming a biological bond with their partner. But as far as Tom knew, Harry had no such excuse this time around.

It had been two years for Harry; Tom had to keep reminding himself of that. Though for them it had only been a handful of days, Harry had lived with these people for TWO YEARS. He had seen that ship - he couldn't imagine living in those sorts of conditions. Even prison had been more sanitary than that ship, and to survive there for TWO YEARS ...

Tom gave himself a mental shake, moving across the mess hall and choosing the chair directly across from his younger friend. Harry reacted to his presence only with a slight shifting of his eyes, before he once again went back to staring out into space.

"You alright?" Harry started at the question, a small laugh escaping him. At Tom's furrowed brow, however, he waved his hands in the Lieutenant's direction.

"Nobody has asked me that in a long time." He revealed to his friend, a smile tugging at his lips as he leaned back in his seat. He still hadn't changed into his uniform, and the relaxed position only increased the surrealness of the situation for Tom. He didn't look right; not in the worn clothes and messy hair. He didn't look like the Starfleet Officer that he was.

Straightening in his chair after a moment, Harry leaned forward to fix his eyes on Tom's. "What is it?"

Tom shifted slightly, obviously uncomfortable with the straight forward question. At his silence, Harry sighed, leaning back in his chair again, and Tom was struck by just how RESTLESS Harry seemed. He couldn't sit still, couldn't seem to relax - like a pin balanced on its edge.

"I know you have questions." Harry spoke softly, and Tom started at the noise when he had expected nothing but silence. "But I can't give you the answers you're looking for, Tom." Harry's expression was apologetic now, as he turned his gaze once again to his older friend. There was a sadness there that Tom hadn't been expecting, and he felt a sudden flash of guilt; though why, he wasn't quite certain.

"I'm just ... WE'RE just worried about you, Harry." And it was true - he wasn't the only one with concerns. Be'lanna shared them, as did several junior members of the bridge crew. But he was worried those most- Be'lanna had the grace not to claim that he was overreacting ... for once.

Harry gave another laugh, a small curling his lips that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'm fine, Tom. Really."

Tom merely shook his head. "No, you're not, Harry. You've been acting off ever since you got back."

Harry leaned back in his seat with a sigh. He had known this would come up eventually, though to be honest he had been hoping for a bit more time. Perhaps if Kes was still here, he would have been ... not forced, but rather encouraged to speak with her. But the telepath was gone; had been for several years. There was nobody on board Voyager properly equipped to deal with the sort of issues he was facing, from what he couldn't deny was alcoholism to the withdrawal he was currently going through.

And the anger. He had never been this angry before; had never wanted to KILL anything before. Not like he hated the Cylons. The Borg had always frightened him, but there was something about their hive mentality, their sheer lack of emotions or individual thought that stopped him from blind hatred. The Cylons were different; they didn't want to assimilate the Universe. They truly HATED the human race. They didn't just hate the remnants of the Twelve Colonies; their one thought was the total annihilation of all humans, and they would use any means at their disposal to achieve that end.

Tom looked ready to speak again, and Harry cut him off with a sharp diagonal swipe of his hand. He was agitated, uneasy, and restless. Quite suddenly, he just wanted to be gone. Back in his quarters that seemed far too large after two years sharing cramped quarters with fellow engineers and pilots - but anything was better than this, suddenly. "Enough!" The sharp reprimand drew a few startled stares, and Harry internally cursed himself. More attention was the last thing he wanted.

Pushing himself to his feet angrily, Harry moved toward the door, heaving a sigh of frustration as he heard Tom following right behind him. He actually made it into the turbolift before the other man caught up with him. The doors swished shut behind them, and Harry stared at the wall silently, his face set into a mask of anger.

"Harry, what the hell?"

Calling out the deck for his quarters, Harry turned to his friend with a scowl firmly fixed on his features. "Enough, Tom. Alright? Just ... stop. It's been TWO YEARS. I haven't been gone a couple of days. Or even a couple of weeks. It's been two years. People change - frak, look at you!" He surprised himself not only for bringing up the other man's less than savory past, but also with the crude language - not that Tom understood it. To him, the word meant nothing, just like it had to Harry the first time he had heard it shortly after arriving on the Galactica.

It just served as another reminder of how long he had been gone; how much he had changed.

"I'm not the same person I was before - you're right. And you can't fix that. You can't fix ME." Harry continued before Tom could speak, though his voice had grown softer. "I'm sorry Tom. This isn't something I can just ... fix. There's nothing left to fix."

Tom was silent as he regarded his friend. Harry was right - it WAS easy to forget that the younger man had been missing for two years - at least from his perspective. But there was more to his concern than that.

"Then why aren't you sleeping?" Tom spoke as the turbolift opened, and Harry stiffened in the act of stepping across the threshold. The door refused to close with him partially in the turbolift still, and their around them was thick with tension. Finally, however, Harry stepped the rest of the way out of the turbolift without another word, turning in the direction of his rooms.

His rooms were too large. Harry stared around them with distaste, his eyes flashing to the replicator for a moment before he turned away from it with a flash of irritation.

He moved instead toward his bedroom, slowly lowering himself onto the soft surface. He wasn't used to so much open space anymore; back on the Galactica he had had only a small, narrow bunk to call his own, a cramped locker to store what few personal possessions he had collected. He hadn't even been able to retrieve those items - too caught up in the joy of seeing Tom again. Of being on Voyager.

How quickly the brief flash of happiness had faded. It had been replaced by something else; not quite discontent, but more a sense that he didn't belong. Which was ridiculous; this was VOYAGER. His home, or at least the closest thing to it.

But he had been gone too long; had forged friendships and created both alliances and enemies on board the Galactica. He couldn't just step back into his old life like nothing had happened. He had changed. His view of the world had changed. Yet Voyager had remained the same.

Rationally he knew that was because little time had passed for the ship and its crew. For them, he had been missing for only a handful of days. They had expected to find the old Ensign Kim, proud Starfleet Officer, waiting for them. Instead they had found . . . HIM. Was he a disappointment to his friends, his shipmates? He wouldn't blame them if they saw him as such. But he had done the best he could with what he had to work with.

Or so he told himself. It was easy to look back now and judge, see how he could have done things differently. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, after all. In the moment, however, things were different. In the moment, it was harder to see what the right course of action was; especially when the belief that he had been left behind for dead was so strong.

He had a new uniform now, a new com badge - he had clung to his old, broken com badge these past two years the way some had clung to their religious books and memorabilia. Now, it was nothing but a broken piece of technology that had so easily been replaced.

Items that he had yet to don. He remained still in his civilian clothing from the Galactica; so out of place both on Voyager and in the federation. They were clean for perhaps the first time in months, at least. He was resistant to returning to his regulation uniform, however, in a way he couldn't really explain. He couldn't explain it to Captain Janeway or Tom Paris, because he didn't understand it himself.

Tom was right; he wasn't sleeping. On Galactica nobody had really noticed - or, if they had, they hadn't mentioned it. Nobody was quite right in the head, not after everything they had lost. It wouldn't take long for the crew of Voyager to force one remedy or another down his throat in the hopes of "fixing" him. Like it was that easy; like a drug induced sleep would fix everything that was wrong.

Running his fingers through his hair, Harry suddenly lurched to his feet. Pacing from one end of the room to the other, he fought with little success to calm his suddenly frayed nerves. The truth be told, Tom had every reason to be concerned over him. But that didn't mean that he had to like it.

Things weren't getting better. Not like he had thought they would. And he had - he had honestly thought that things would get better. That they would go back to the way they had been. The way HE had been.

There was no going back. He was beginning to see that.

Harry had never been a violent man. He was a scientist, a bridge officer. A good student, a good friend. A model citizen. He scoffed at those titles now, even as he remembered how proud of them he had been once upon a time. But two years fighting for scraps on a derelict ship had changed that. Had changed him. His parents wouldn't recognize him as the child they had raised. Frak, he barely recognized himself at times.

Bracing his hands against the view port, Harry stared out into the vast emptiness of space. His heart was racing, and he fought to calm his breathing. It felt as though he had been running, as if he had pushed his body beyond its physical limits. But he hadn't - for once, he could remain completely still, without the worry of what part of the ship was going to fail this time.

This was Voyager, not a derelict old Battlestar. He was a Starfleet officer again, not another refugee among hundreds of nameless faces.

If only he could feel like that was true.