Unrequited (Trip x OC)

Twenty

"No, I'm afraid he will let you go," he mumbled, and I stopped walking. He stopped next to me, turning to face me.

"You don't want me to go?"

"Crap," he mumbled. "I forgot how good your hearing was. You weren't supposed to hear that, Em."

"Charles--"

"Trip," he corrected.

I sighed. "Trip. I thought we were past this... obsession you had with not allowing me to go on missions. I mean... I know I'm not Starfleet, but I've had my fair share of training and experience since we've been on this ship, too. I can handle myself out there."

"I know, it's just... we don't know the nature of the aliens' relationship with those humans. They could be like... lifesucking aliens that use humans as cattle to feed off of."

"Well, we won't know until we check it out, will we?" I patted him on the arm and began walking again, making my way to the bridge.

When I walked through the doors, my eyes drew straight to my father. He wasn't in his usual uniform; he wore a button-up and some canvas pants, which I realized was the type of clothing the people on the planet would expect.

"Hey, Captain," I smiled. "When are we leaving?"

"As soon as we're all ready," he smiled softly at me, offering over a stack of folded clothes.

I knit my brows together as I took the clothes from my father. "I thought you didn't want me to go, Dad."

My father glanced over at Trip with a look I didn't recognize. "Ah, well... I thought we could save a lot of time if we skipped the argument. You would probably just end up going anyway."

Trip grabbed a stack of clothes sitting on the table and headed down the hallway without a word.

I frowned. He still wasn't over our argument. I really didn't understand why it was such a big deal to him; I had saved him plenty of times, too, as he had pointed out to me.

I got changed in a kind of daze, thinking about how upset I had made Trip. We met in the transporter room.

My father was already waiting for us. Trip and I arrived at the same time.

He wore a brown jacket over a dark blue button up with the same tan-colored pants as my father. Most importantly, though, he had a cowboy hat on.

"Hey there, cowboy," I grinned.

His eyes drifted from the ground to look at me. He looked like he was trying not to smile, but it won out and spread across his features, lighting up his eyes.

He tipped his hat at me. "M'lady."

I looked over at my dad. "Are we all ready to go?"

He nodded. "We've got everything we need. I hope you have your good shoes on, because we're going to be walking quite a ways. We'll beam outside the town and then walk in."

I lifted my long dress slightly to show my sneakers underneath, then placed my hands on my hips proudly. "I'm ready."

My father chuckled, shaking his head. "Alright, load up."

We stepped onto the transporter platform, and one bright flash later, we were standing in a forest.

On our way to the town, we encountered a horse dealer. Trip offered to borrow the horse for a few hours, and gave up his 19th century gun and harmonica as collateral.

"Only two of us will fit on that horse," I told Trip after we disappeared back into the thicket of trees to meet back up with my dad, who wasn't far.