Tucker's Perspective:
Trip also wished he were there, the crew might be a little disgruntled but at least he wouldn't have to worry about getting strapped to a torture machine. Although honestly, he'd take that over his current dilemma. Starfleet had a code of conduct or whatever when it came to torture-esc type things. It seemed the blue guys had no such procedures, or if they did they sure as hell weren't following them. Trip would've snorted if he had the strength, but at the moment he was a little worse for wear.
After god knows how long he was finally taken away from that thing, he shivered. It was so horrible, the pain, and that wasn't even all of it, his mind had felt like it wasn't in control, as if there were something telling it what to do.
At some point he had fallen unconscious, the pain finally overloading his brain. When he came to he was in this room, with the cold steel walls and no bed or anything.
And so here he lay, shivering against the floor, crumpled up in a ball clutching himself for dear life. Just wishing he weren't here, anywhere but here. He wished for Enterprise, and every couple of minutes he'd imagine he was there, in the engine room. Anna was making cracks, Rostov would screw up the EPS manifolds, and everything was alright. Before it was all viciously snatched away, reality would come crashing in and the horrors intensified.
A sudden crackle brought Trip's head flying up, seeking potential sources of the mind-shattering pain he would give anything to avoid.
But his view was devoid of any such objects, all his eyes could see were the metal poles that barred him from-, from the Enterprise.
His eyes began to tear, the stress, the emotions, the absurdity of their whole goddamn situation. Not to mention his situation added on top. And maybe it was the hours of unfathomable torture, his reserves finally reaching their breaking point, or perhaps he had just stopped running, ending the pursuit in which his problems so desperately tried to catch him. To look him in the eye and force him to deal with them, to give them the peace they so wanted.
Would they linger and fester? Becoming such as that he would lose himself within their unwavering force? Would Charles Tucker fall to hate and despair, clinging on to his very destruction with a fever born of horror?
Or would he rise above them? Resolving his issues, coming to peace in the knowledge that he had done what he could to the best of his ability? That his essence may finally be cleansed in the greatness found all around him, if only he would look?
This outcome, the choices now distinguished, would decide the fate of those beyond his simple holding cell. The countless lives riding on a single man, was decided, by a single tear…