Title: Thinking Of Disappearing

//When are you thinking of disappearing?
When are you falling off the map?
When the unknown that you're fearing's in the clearing?
When your world's gone flat?//

Seamus Harper stared out at the deep, dark expanse of space, as the Andromeda sped away into the mostly empty void of nothingness. He sighed and rubbed at his weary eyes, tired to the depths of his soul. He hadn't much sleep last night. He hadn't much sleep lately at all.

He'd lay awake and think about it. What he had been thinking about for the past week, when the anchor in his life had been uprooted and he had been left alone, again. He'd lay awake and think about his only viable option out, and he wouldn't get much sleep, and that would make things worse.

Seamus sighed and lifted himself out of his seat in the bridge, tearing himself away from the dark vacuum in front of him that welcomed him in with open arms. There was no one on the bridge to
notice him leave, if they'd even care if there was. It was like he had disappeared.

He had been thinking about it for a while.

//When you're waiting for your life to be depicted?
When you're feeling estrangement from escape?//

It was like he was trapped. Not just physically, the way he was trapped inside Andromeda's inpeccable metal walls, kept safely away from the raging winds outside that would tear one limb from limb. He was trapped away from anything else, away from being himself, away from the things he loved.

Realistically, he had no one to blame but himself. No one put a gun to his head to stay on Andromeda. And he didn't hate it. This is what he wanted. If he had been in a better state of mind he would realize that.

But too much had happened, and he wanted out. This made it worse. He wanted to run away the way he ran away from everything else in his
life.

Just like surfing. Teetering vicariously on the edge, waiting to be plummeted into a wet, frothy death, staying one step ahead of oblivion. That's the way he spent most of his life. He ran away from danger. And he would run away from this danger the only way he had left.

//When you're packaged up, beautifully scripted,
insulated with electrical tape?//

An absurd thought ran through his head when he wondered what Dylan would think when he found out. Who the hell cared what Dylan would think? Obviously not Harper, he was the one doing this for Chrissakes.

All he had been to Dylan was another pretty face, certainly not something to be loved or cherished. He had never been that to anyone, he was beginning to lose hope that he ever would be.

And in the end, the inevitable happened. Dylan left him. The way everyone else did, and would, and will in the future.

That had been a week ago. A week of remorse and anger.

Seamus couldn't stand it anymore.

//When the famous are getting airborne?
When the evacuation's underway?
And not for all the pot in Rosedale
could you possibly get them to stay?//

Everyone treated him differently. Avoided him, whispered over his head or behind his back. They would leave him, too, he knew this. Leave him on some godforsaken planet in the backwaters of the galaxy, simply abandon him one day. Or maybe they'd be a little more considerate about it and actualy confront him, kick him off, give him time to get his stuff.

If Harper had been in a better state of mind he'd realize that the rest of the crew was worried about him, giving him his space, letting him cool off. That Dylan was going through as much grief as he, letting things calm down before patching up whatever semblance of a friendship would be left.

But Harper wasn't in a better state of mind. He sealed his door shut and sat on his bed and pulled out his last nickle-bag, rolled his last joint, and felt sorry for himself.

He wondered why he hadn't thought of it sooner.

//When a blind eye turns to duty?
When *I'm* standing there holding the door?
Saying things like after you and before beauty?
And okay, maybe there's room for just one more?//

When the ship detected a presence of smoke in his cabin, Rommie materialized before him. She saw him smoking his pot, he didn't care. She asked him how he was doing, he told her to stuff it. She reminded him that he was supposed to be on the bridge monitoring their progress, searching for usable materials, he told her to frigg off.

Rommie disappeared.

Harper groaned when he realized she had probably gone off to report this to some other member of the crew, and he'd have to work fast.

He wondered if anyone would really care, if they found out. If they'd be glad the burden was gone, the extra mouth to feed was no longer in their care. He figured they would be.

Harper put out his joint and walked into his cramped bathroom.

//When technology fails, forever changes,
and hardcore shadows are gone?//

It had happened before. People had left him behind, not really caring for the consequences it would have on him.

His parents had died when he was all but seven. Technology couldn't save them, and they didn't even have the will. The disease ate away at their bodies until all that was left was Seamus, orphaned and impoverished.

Ultimately, alone.

//When what the average age rearranges,
is forever certain, forever wrong?//

His friends weren't much of a help either. They didn't approve of his leaving Earth, to see the galaxy. Didn't approve of him making himself into more than what they could ever accomplish.

They never kept in touch, though they promised they would. They let him float on, feeling lost, to find new friend. If they could be called that.

//When new adventures in electronics
and signals are pleasing to the ear?
Or when tubes are cooking up distortion
Meaning the end of suffering is near?//

When he lived on the stations, when his life 'improved' with the implant, his work his adventures, it couldn't save him from being alone then. The first time he ever loved someone, the first time he
ever let someone that close to him, to his heart, she broke it.

She left him with the time-tested 'it's not you, it's me'. The same way others would leave him, and others, and now Dylan.

Harper was sick of it. He would be the one to leave this time.

//When the podium sprouting weeds is redundant
and called ever ridiculous by the Times?
When people have different needs and time
smiles on undisciplined minds?//

Harper rummaged around in his bathroom cupboards and drew out a naked razor. He stared at it and sighed, too tired to think anything else.

He sat on the bathroom floor, and lifted off the bright Hawaiian shirt he wore. No sense getting blood all over it.

//When you're getting king-size satisfaction
In the church bells of the night?//

Harper stared at the happy shirt before him, giving it a mockery of a smile he once wore. What a lie.

If he had stayed, they would have left him anyway. He'd have ended up on the streets of anywhere, Milky Way, begging for a dollar or a light or a hit or whatever he'd be living for at that time. He'd have given up on people. He should have done that a while ago.

//With the shaky pale transactions
of all the heartache in your social life?//

I'm not sorry, he thought. He wasn't sorry to Dylan. The self-righteous all-Terran hero bastard drove him to it. He wasn't sorry to Rev, he would have just spouted off some extremist Wayism crap that didn't change the fact that he was Magog. He was indifferent about Tyr. He would be indifferent about him, anyway. It was the same with Rommie, who couldn't give the time of day for Seamus, her creator.

Maybe he was a little sorry about Beka, a little sorry that she saw something in him that wasn't there.

And Trance...oh, her heart would be broken.

I'm sorry, Trance. But you might've left me anyway.

//When *are* you thinking of disappearing?
When there's nothing but heartache
in your social life?//

They might have left him anyway. So with a flick of his wrist and a quick, painful grimace, Seamus left them instead.

//When are *you* thinking of disappearing?//


End.