"Once Bitten... Twice shy..."

T'zark walked the Antares corridors. For once... in a short STARFLEET career of brash and daredevil-may-care seizing the moment... the young Vulcan Helmsman Ace was uncertain... indeed truth to be told... he was scared.

He faced down Orion pirates with a sneer of derision, unworldly intelligences bent on the destruction of all non-self lifeforms with a casual raised eyebrow of interest, even augmented superhumans with a glint in his eye and a '...I think I can take 'em' attitude of aggressive challenge.

But all that fades to nothing with the uncertain fear that plagued his thoughts now...

He was there. Standing outside her door. Mirenne.

T'zark had avoided as much contact with the ships councilor to... give her HER space. But each day it grew more and more difficult to not remember... how they use to be. The few times... in need that Mirenne had contacted his mind were... pure agony. His mind remembered the feel of her thoughts how just being in her presence fired his senses when they were together.

The loss of that... closeness was unbearable. Did she know... how could she NOT know how much he longed to feel the distinctive feel of her affectionate thoughts? To hold her and know her heart was his as much as his heart was hers.

But... that intimacy was no more. She just did not feel that way for him anymore... and never would again. It must be... easier for so open a race as Betazoids... to just turn off their emotions. Vulcans were a private folk and hid their emotions. T'zark had never been fooled... Vulcans DO feel... they just practice hiding them so well... they convince themselves they feel nothing. A self-delusion T'zark had little but contempt for.

{How foolish to have come here. It would only cause more longing and... painful memories. I'll just leave before I make an even bigger fool of myself...}

T'zark stood before the door and recalled the dearest memories he held of Mirenne. Recalling how happy... how fulfilled he was to have her close and the feelings they shared...

Thinking to himself but filling his mind with memories of Mirenne... he recites in silence...

{"Come to me in my dreams and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay...
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cams't a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: 'My love why sufferest thou?'

Come to me in my dreams and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay...
The hopeless longing of the day."}

T'zark turned to leave... never chiming the door.

On the other side of the door, Mirenne obsessively tidies the room she no longer has to herself, since the damage to the living quarters has left all but the Captain with one or more "roommates" during repairs.

She pauses, remembering a verse she had heard years before. Something she couldn't place, something about the day and the night...and then, thinking about the night, she suddenly turns rigid. Voices swell in her mind that drown out the one on the edge of her memory. Knowing that no one can hear her, she hisses through clenched teeth, "No. NO! You would have done the same to us! You wouldn't even give us a CHANCE to make peace!" Doubling over, she continues to speak as the tide of voices rises. "I took responsibility. I felt you die, and I was the only one! I felt it and I felt your attack and I felt everyone feeling it too I did and I had to! But I saved the entity and everyone else just thought airlock yes airlock but I saved it and I saved him too he wanted to take all the risk but I didn't let him..." and that scrap of verse runs through her mind again, only this time it seems strangely close and real and immediate. And somehow things are well again, at least for now.

Shivering, she goes back to straightening things.