[ The time-traveling shenanigans of two ensigns from the future shouldn't be affecting her this much. Now that the frustration with their antics has faded, everything should be back to business as usual. Weapons checks, explosions in the science labs, noise complaints... It's been a day of being back on the daily grind and she should be fine now. But she's not. And she can't even blame her low mood and high distractability on an Orion Hurricane hangover — in that regard, she really is just fine.
Don't make any attachments. That's the advice she'd given Ensign Boimler when he'd first come aboard the Enterprise. If only someone had been able to share something similar with her when she'd traveled to the past. All she'd had were standard temporal protocols and a mission requiring her to disregard half of them in order to save the future of humanity. Yes, the pressure of it had weighed on her at the time, but it's not what stayed with her.
At least once a day, she takes the wristwatch out of the secured drawer where she keeps it. She shouldn't keep it, she knows that very well. All evidence of her trip to the past should be destroyed, but... It's the only thing she has left of him. Holding it for even just a few minutes each day reminds her that it was real, that he was real, even if no one can ever know. And if the only solace she can find in her grief is by holding a broken wristwatch between her hands a few times a day, then so be it. It's not like she can do the healthy thing and talk about her feelings with a Starfleet counselor. ]
there's surviving, and then there's living — for frommojave
Don't make any attachments. That's the advice she'd given Ensign Boimler when he'd first come aboard the Enterprise. If only someone had been able to share something similar with her when she'd traveled to the past. All she'd had were standard temporal protocols and a mission requiring her to disregard half of them in order to save the future of humanity. Yes, the pressure of it had weighed on her at the time, but it's not what stayed with her.
At least once a day, she takes the wristwatch out of the secured drawer where she keeps it. She shouldn't keep it, she knows that very well. All evidence of her trip to the past should be destroyed, but... It's the only thing she has left of him. Holding it for even just a few minutes each day reminds her that it was real, that he was real, even if no one can ever know. And if the only solace she can find in her grief is by holding a broken wristwatch between her hands a few times a day, then so be it. It's not like she can do the healthy thing and talk about her feelings with a Starfleet counselor. ]