Trip
He stands in his living room, surrounded by the boxes that contain his life from the past three years and feels a strange inertia come over him. He realises that for the first time in seventeen years he doesn't have a project, for the first time in fifteen years he doesn't have a job.
He picks up the PADD on his coffee table, and as is his habit, goes straight to his messages. There is no action anymore, he selects all the work related messages and forwards them, en mass to Kelby. This stuff is not his problem anymore. He starts transferring personal stuff to his cloud account and deleting anything he doesn't want to keep. The email with the Houston job catches his eye again. It would only be half the dream, T'Pol won't be with him, but the project still looks interesting, it's closer to his family, and far away from here. A clean break. That's what he needs.
He calls the eccentric, billionaire owner on the number provided and is surprised when he answers personally. They talk for thirty minutes, The guy knows his stuff and is personally involved in R D with his company. Forty-five minutes after the call began, a full offer arrives in Trip's inbox.
The number of zeros makes his head swim and it includes all the perks. No need to worry about getting to Houston, just give them a call and he'll have the use of a private shuttle in a matter of hours, transfer to the shuttle port included. Got things to ship? Just box them up and call this number, they'll pick it up within twenty-four hours and bill it to the company. It's so easy.
Easy is what he needs right now. There is no space in his life for new regrets. He doesn't want to have to think too deeply about things, he doesn't want to think about what's happened, about what he's lost, about who he's lost. He doesn't want to get caught in a whirlpool of misery about where his life has suddenly ended up. If he loses any momentum he'll find himself sitting in a corner rocking. He wants a place to hide, a place where he has no history, a place with no memories of her. So he puts his thumbprint on the contract and sends it off. He calls the shipping company to collect his personal items the next day, he arranges for a shuttle to Houston for the next evening.
As expected, he is done with Starfleet the following day. They see no point in holding him to a notice period, he would have been on leave anyway. They require that he not take on a new position for a month. That's fine, he'll go visit his parents, do some fishing and diving, whatever; he can keep busy. The car arrives to take him to the shuttle port and he closes the door to his apartment without looking back. He doesn't leave a forwarding address with Starfleet, or any of his friends, or former colleagues.
It's not out of cruelty or indifference, he just needs a clean break. He is just trying to survive a situation he can't begin to understand. Because he feels like he's being pulled apart and all his effort goes into preventing that from happening. Because everything in his life takes effort. It takes effort to get up in the morning, it takes effort to go to bed. It takes effort, to think, to decide, to walk, to talk, to breathe.
T'Les
When Soval contacted her she was uncertain of what to make of the information he provided. That T'Pol's reason for returning home is complicated. That she has sustained damage while on her latest mission that has degraded her neural pathways. That she is emotional. That she may have formed an illogical attachment to a human.
T'Pol has always been more emotional than the average Vulcan. T'Les has hypothesised that the reason T'Pol had been able to stay amongst humans so long was because her more emotional nature. She had begun to get concerned that T'Pol may never return to Vulcan. She informs Soval that under the circumstances it is logical to complete the marriage to Koss. He agrees that it may be what's she needs to bring her back to logic.
When T'Pol does arrive home T'Les is surprised at her lack of resistance to the wedding, her lack of resistance to anything. She was warned by Soval that she would find T'Pol much changed. She expected her to be more emotional, more volatile, more unpredictable. If anything she is the opposite. When T'Pol reads the letter from Koss, she has no reaction. When he comes to the house to discuss the wedding, she gives no objection. When, surprised at how passive T'Pol is being and T'Les suggests that she could undertake the wedding negotiations on her behalf, T'Pol does not show the slightest interest either way. When she asks T'Pol why she is suddenly so willing to acquiesce to the marriage, T'Pol simply responds that it is logical.
In the days before the wedding she watches her daughter closely. T'Pol eats little, it is obvious from her demeanour that she finds the taste and smell of the food unpleasant.
"You have become too accustomed to human food, daughter." She chides. Once the implied criticism would have had her daughter bristling like a Ka-ran-zhi, giving T'Les the opportunity to criticise her emotions.
Now, T'Pol simply looks at her with dead eyes. "Perhaps." is her reply.
T'Pol seems to sleep too much. The daughter she remembered had always been full of energy. As a young child it had been a struggle to get her to settle for meditation and take on the quiet, economy of movement that is valued in a Vulcan. She had thirsted for knowledge, understanding, adventure. Now she has all the vitality of a stone.
T'Les has the disquieting thought that she would have preferred it if her daughter had arrived home more emotional, rather than like this. This T'Pol is so apathetic it is almost as if she is in stasis.
So the days pass and T'Les watches T'Pol sleep too much and eat too little, and accept too much and object to too little. She can't quite fight the feeling that her daughter's collapse is imminent. She can't quite suppress the worry that her daughter is somehow fundamentally broken and marriage to Koss will only make things worse. She can't quite suppress the concern that, for her daughter, it takes all the energy she has left to simply breathe.
XXX