Quiet
Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager, its characters, etc. are owned by Paramount.
His room was too quiet.
In fact, the whole damn ship was too quiet.
He strained to hear the tiniest of sounds, a footfall from the corridor outside his quarters, the slight humming vibration of a starship at warp, the beating of his heart. But silence was his only companion.
It seemed strange, his preoccupation with the stillness. They had just spent two months in a veritable wilderness, a peaceful coexistence that surely should have entailed a great deal of silence, tranquility. And yet, there had always been a backdrop, a beautiful orchestra to his life there. The whisper of the wind in the trees, the sharp cry of birds taking flight, the velvety lilt of Kathryn's voice, her laugh.
But here there was nothing, nothing but the empty sterility of a vast machine flying through the depths of space, of silence.
He had known it would be hard to leave New Earth. He just hadn't realized that it would be the quiet that bothered him the most.
For he could no longer spend his nights listening to her breathe.
The End