Have You Seen Me Lately?
"Get away from me/this isn't gonna be easy/but I don't need you/believe me/you've got a piece of me/but it's just a little piece of me/and I don't need anyone/and these days I feel like I'm fading away."-Have you Seen Me Lately-Counting Crows
Trip some how made it back to his quarters on the Columbia. He sat down on the side of his bed wearily. It was then he noticed his hands were shaking. He clenched them, willing in his mind to make them stop. But he was shaken through and through.
What had just happened? The question kept whispering in his ears.
He had been thinking of his crewmates on Enterprise. Deep in his heart, the place he kept locked up tight, he had been missing them. He was feeling lonely. He was feeling sorry for abandoning them and not being there to help them find Phlox. He had been lying to himself for so long that he was better on Columbia that he almost began to believe it. He was better without entanglements. He was better being colleagues than friends with those he worked with.
And then his mind invariably wandered back to her. T'Pol. Trip was angry with himself. His last words to her haunted him. T'Pol had tried to help him, to talk to him, and he had shut her out. She hadn't even bothered to come to his farewell party in the mess hall after what he had said.
It was their eternal dance. They each took turns attempting to talk, to get back what they once had, and the other was never ready, always shutting the other out. This time it was Trip who kept his distance. He had told her that not everything in his life was about her. But it was. This move was all about her. He couldn't work with her. He couldn't be a good engineer without worrying about what might happen to her. He couldn't work with her side-by-side knowing it was over between them, that she didn't care for him any more.
Despite his best efforts, he had been thinking about her, day dreaming, and then she was there. Some how they had connected, telepathically, over the deep space that now separated him. She must have been thinking about him. How else…….?
Trip hadn't meant to upset T'Pol by commenting on her choice of meditation spots-a blank white void. But it wasn't a blank white void. Not with him there. They had fought. She wanted him to go away. He was violating her privacy. He hadn't meant to intrude. She made him feel as if he was responsible for interrupting her. Like he had any control of the situation! She was the telepathic one!
Had she been meditating to get him out of her mind? He was after all the one who had left. Why would she be angry with him? Could it be possible that she really loved him as much as he loved her? He thought at one time she did.
Trip leaned back on his bed and put his hand over his eyes. This was what he had been trying to get away from. He couldn't understand her. He couldn't understand himself.
Would this happen again? Would his day dreams be forever haunted by her presence? He was determined to conquer these feelings. He was determined to regain his new life, this separate identity for himself, unconnected to T'Pol or any of his friends on Enterprise.
And yet that part of his heart, the part he was not listening to, the part he kept locked away, secretly hoped that they would connect again.