In principio: Lux Perpetua

Posted on Sun Aug 2nd, 2026 @ 6:23pm by Master Chief Petty Officer Julian Trent

3,407 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: San Damiano, Assisi, Italy, Earth
Timeline: Spring 2377

San Damiano, Assisi, Italy, Earth, 2377

Julian had carried Saint Luke for almost two years before he understood that keeping the medallion was becoming another way of refusing to let Nico die.

After Nico’s death, the Captain had allowed Julian to remain in their quarters longer than regulations strictly permitted. Nobody called it kindness, but Julian recognised kindness when it arrived disguised as administrative convenience. The ship was damaged, crew assignments were unsettled and nobody needed the second bunk immediately.

It could not last. Julian was a Petty Officer, and the quarters had been assigned for two. Eventually another name would appear beside his on the occupancy record. Somebody would arrive with a bag, apologise for the circumstances and begin placing their belongings where Nico’s had been.

Julian knew he could not bear it. Before anyone asked, he requested a bunk in shared berthing on another deck and began packing Nico’s things for his family. Clothing, a personal PADD, saved recordings and holopictures. A prayer book worn soft around the edges, a rosary, two old devotional cards and a small image of the Virgin passed down through the family. His abuela’s wooden spoon, the clay pot Julian had never learned to clean properly and the non-replicated food Nico had been saving for occasions that never came.

He knew enough about Nico’s family to understand why they did not know him. Mainstream Catholicism had long since stopped treating same-sex or interspecies relationships as remarkable, but Nico’s family belonged to a more conservative community, one where being with another man would have been difficult for some and being with someone outside the faith harder still. Nico had not been ashamed of Julian. He had simply refused to name Julian as something Julian had not yet agreed to become.

Then the war had come, and every difficult conversation became something for another day, after the next battle, after the next message cleared the relays, after everyone had slept. Tomorrow had become the corridor outside section 8-12.

Julian sent the containers to Earth with only the official documentation. A family mourning a son received his prayer book, his holopictures, his abuela’s wooden spoon and the food he had been keeping. They would never know who had wrapped each object or why nothing arrived broken.

Saint Luke did not go with them.

The medallion was the one thing of Nico’s Julian did not return. Nico’s family believed he carried it constantly because that was what he had always told them, and sending it back would prove he had not. More than that, Julian did not want to return it. So he kept it with him.

He moved into a bunk on another deck with one bag, three uniforms and barely enough belongings to fill the narrow locker beside it. Five other people slept around him, their breathing, movement and occasional snoring filling the compartment through the night. It helped. It kept him moving until he could not move anymore.

The medallion stayed with him through the accident, the medical evacuation, surgery, rehabilitation and the first year of learning what his new heart could tolerate. It rested against the skin above the implant, warm when he remembered it was there and cold when he first woke. He touched it before medical reviews, during transport and whenever the unfamiliar rhythm beneath his ribs felt too precise to belong to him. Some nights he closed his hand around Saint Luke and counted each beat until sleep came. And when he was alone and the silence was too much, he talked to it as if Nico was sitting behind him.

And sometimes, he pretended Nico was. And that was when Julian began to understand the danger. The medallion had stopped reminding him of Nico. It had become a talisman for someone no longer there, an excuse to keep pretending. He tried leaving it in a drawer for one night. He lasted forty minutes before getting out of bed, crossing the room and putting it back around his neck with hands that shook from something he refused to name. The next morning, Julian stood in front of the mirror and looked at the small circle of metal resting on his unscarred chest. Modern medicine had erased every outward trace of the replacement implant.

And he knew with a cold certainty that Nico would have hated this. Not the grief, because Nico had never been frightened of grief, faith having taught him that sorrow was something to be carried rather than defeated, something within which faith might offer comfort. He would have hated the way Julian had turned Saint Luke into a shrine for a dead man without the comfort of the faith tied to it.

Julian removed the chain slowly and placed it in his palm. He did not put it back on. It took him another two months to decide what to do with it.

Sending it to Nico’s family was out of the question. And taking it somewhere Julian knew seemed…selfish. There was a Catholic church in York, but York was childhood, cold flats, crowded clubs and a different body every night. And the one time Nico had visited, the weather had been horrendous, the clubs abysmal and honestly…the one redeeming feature had been a bakery they found.

So York was out of the question, the same as wherever Nico had come from. But the medallion did not belong with him anymore.

Research was an old friend of Julian’s busy mind, so he threw himself into it. Rome appeared first, unavoidable and monumental. He looked at images of Saint Peter’s, its vast square, marble saints and architecture built to declare authority that had somehow survived World War III, and knew within minutes that he would not take Nico there.

Nico’s faith had never sounded like power. It had sounded like prayers murmured before sleep, fingers touching Julian’s chest after a nightmare and food pressed upon people who claimed not to be hungry. It had been candles, saints, laughter and the stubborn insistence that you should love those around you and forgive. And Julian could use some forgiveness.

Eventually, Julian found Assisi. He read about Francis, peace, poverty and the care of things considered small. He read about Clare, who had built a life around faith without requiring the world’s permission. He found images of a hill town made from warm stone, rising above green valleys beneath a sky so blue it seemed unreal.

Then he found San Damiano. The sanctuary stood outside the city walls, surrounded by olive trees. It was small compared with the basilicas above, old and simple, a place rebuilt by hands rather than announced by power. Francis had prayed there. Clare had lived there, worked there and died there. It had held community, service, fear and love for centuries before Julian and Nico were born. It sounded…like somewhere Nico would have liked to see.

So Julian booked passage before he could change his mind. He had shore leave coming up. It all lined up.

The journey from Earth orbit to Italy took less time than travelling across Earth once had, but Julian still felt as though he had crossed something larger than distance. He arrived in Assisi in the late morning, hair cut close to his skull, carrying one small bag and wearing a dark coat despite the spring warmth because the inside pocket kept the medallion close without placing it against his skin.

The town climbed around him in pale stone, narrow streets and stairways worn smooth by centuries of feet. Flowers spilled from balconies. Bells marked the hour from somewhere above, their sound moving between the buildings before opening across the valley. Julian stopped twice on the way down towards San Damiano. The first time, he pretended to study the view. The second time, he admitted the hill had tested his heart more than expected and stood beneath the shade of a wall until the implant settled into a slower rhythm. Medical had cleared him for travel, walking and a return to duty with limits on exertion, though apparently Assisi had not been consulted on what qualified as moderate. He was sweaty, tired and in pain.

He rested one hand against his chest and waited. Saint Luke remained in his pocket, and the absence of the chain against his neck felt louder than the bells. He missed the way it had rubbed against his neck. It had left a very thin scar along the left side of his neck, one he had decided not to remove. Time would dim it; age would hide it. But for now, he still needed something.

The road descended beyond the city walls, curving through olive groves silvered by sunlight. The trees were not tall, but they had the twisted patience of things accustomed to poor soil and long summers. Their leaves moved in the breeze, green on one side and pale on the other, so the whole grove seemed to flicker as Julian walked. He could have transported closer, but Julian walked. He was not a pilgrim…but he walked with purpose.

San Damiano appeared gradually through the branches. Warm stone, a low portico and the church and convent gathered around one another without grandeur, as though they had grown from the hillside rather than been placed upon it. Julian slowed when he reached the entrance, one hand tightening around the strap of his bag.

People passed him quietly. Pilgrims, visitors and a family with two children who had been warned several times not to run and the moment they were outside the churchyard they shrieked and ran, leaving their parents staring after them with disbelief before laughing. Nobody looked at Julian for long; he was one more person there.

He entered through the portico and stepped into the church. The interior was smaller than expected, the single nave narrow and cool after the sunlight outside. Old frescoes softened the walls, their colours faded but not gone. Wood darkened by age framed the choir, and above the altar hung the image of Christ on the San Damiano cross.

Julian stood near the back and felt abruptly, painfully out of place.

Nico would have known what to do. He would have touched the holy water, crossed himself and entered with the quiet confidence of someone whose body had learned the ritual before his mind was old enough to question it. Julian had watched him do those things during shore leave once, amused by how naturally Nico shifted between devotion and irreverence.

Julian looked towards the small font near the entrance and touched two fingers to the water. The coolness surprised him, and it felt…strange to do this. But he wasn’t doing it for himself. He was doing it for Nico. So he crossed himself, the same way he had seen Nico do hundreds of times.

Julian moved towards the side of the church where candles waited. San Damiano had survived as part of humanity’s living religious heritage, preserved with the same care given to Vulcan temples or the sacred caves of Trill. He picked up a candle, watching it before he let the wick touch the burning flame. Real, not holographic. The wick blackened before catching, and the new flame bent briefly towards him before steadying.

“For Nicolás Canto,” Julian murmured, using the full name Nico had reserved for official forms and loudly hated. Julian kept one hand cupped around the candle, protecting it from a draught he could not feel. “Who believed you were listening.”

The words disappeared into the church without answer. He sat in the nearest pew. He had intended to say something, originally. During the journey, he had built sentences and discarded them, trying to find a goodbye large enough to contain five years without reducing them to the worst day. He had thought about apologising for not naming what they were sooner. He had thought about telling Nico the war was over, as though the dead might care or not know if there was an afterlife. He had thought about describing the new heart, the strange certainty of it and the way Julian sometimes woke with his hand against his chest because he expected to find Nico’s there.

He had also thought about admitting that he was angry. Not at Nico, not even at the situation that got him killed. But at the unfairness that Nico had died because the corridor vented for fourteen seconds, whereas Julian survived on a bypass for over a week in the transit to Earth.

Most of all, Julian was angry that he had believed they had time.

Inside San Damiano, none of the prepared words seemed necessary. Julian sat with his hands folded loosely between his knees and listened to the building breathe around him. Wood shifted above. Fabric moved as someone knelt several rows ahead. A child whispered and was answered by the gentle murmur of an adult. Beyond the thick stone, birds called through the olive trees.

He was alone, but not.

Julian reached into his coat and wrapped his fingers around Saint Luke. The medallion had warmed against his body during the walk, though it had not touched his skin. His thumb found the shallow outline of the saint, then the slight bend in the chain where it had caught beneath the shrapnel.

For one weak moment, Julian considered putting it back around his neck. Nobody would know. He could put it on, sit within Nico’s faith and leave with the chain beneath his collar, promising himself that he would try again another day. He could keep it until the anniversary of Nico’s death. Until the implant no longer felt foreign. Until sleep came without counting.

Until he was ready to feel someone else’s lips on his own.

There would always be another reason. He wasn’t an idiot. He would always find an excuse to hold onto it longer than was healthy. So he closed his eyes and tightened his hand around the medallion until the edge pressed into his palm. “I don’t know how to do this,” he whispered, the words barely disturbing the air. “But I’ll try. You…were my partner. The only person who ever felt like family and…I should have said it while you could hear me.”

Nobody turned towards him. The church accepted the confession without asking for proof. Julian remained in the pew until his backside felt numb and he remembered Nico saying that as a kid, he hated lengthy services because his ass always got numb. It made him smile and he let out a breath, standing. His hand went to the wood in front of him, closing his eyes. The wave of dizziness disappeared after a brief second. Before leaving, he looked once more towards Nico’s candle, its flame small, bright and ordinary.

Outside, the sunlight struck hard enough to make Julian narrow his eyes. Warmth settled across his face and coat as he stepped beneath the portico, and the air smelled faintly of dry earth, leaves and stone heated through the day.

He had researched the sanctuary grounds before coming. He was a tactician after all…you prepared for an incursion. Even if this was…different. But he had researched, even done a holodeck recreation of it, so he knew roughly where to go. He needed a spot where the medallion would be safe. The familiar path from the holodeck stretched beyond the main area, beautiful in a way that not even modern technology could replicate.

He walked until the cultivated path narrowed beside an old boundary wall. The wall was lower there, built from irregular stones fitted together without visible mortar. Grass and tiny yellow flowers grew between the gaps, and an olive tree leaned over it from the terrace above, its branches casting broken shadows across the ground.

He stopped and took a deep breath. He could still see part of San Damiano through the trees: the roof, one section of pale wall and the upper edge of the bell structure against the sky. He looked around, at the simple beauty of the area, before he stepped away from the path and crouched near the base of the wall. Several loose stones lay where earth had shifted over the years. Most were too small or too exposed, but one broad, flat piece had settled beneath the olive roots, half-hidden by grass.

Julian tested it with both hands. The stone moved, and he lifted it carefully, setting it beside his knee rather than dragging it across the ground. Beneath was a shallow hollow filled with dry soil, fallen leaves and the pale network of small roots.

Julian sat back on his heels and looked towards the sanctuary. He did not know whether the precise patch of earth had been formally consecrated. He had searched and found no boundary map capable of satisfying the part of him that wanted certainty. But prayers had been spoken within sight of it for centuries. Bells crossed it every day. Franciscans and pilgrims had walked the nearby path, and the olive roots beneath his hand belonged to the same earth as the church.

Nico had believed in God, not administrative boundaries. Julian reached into his coat. The chain slid into his palm, followed by the medallion. Saint Luke caught the sunlight, bright enough for a moment that Julian had to look away.

He wound the chain around the medallion carefully, folding it into a small circle of silver. The bent link refused to lie flat, and Julian adjusted it twice before accepting that it never would. His hand remained above the hollow.

“This isn’t you,” Julian said quietly, looking down at the metal. “I know that.” The olive leaves moved overhead. “It isn’t even the part of you I loved most,” he continued, his thumb resting against the saint’s worn face. “You snored when you were tired. Your left shoulder hurt after long shifts…your feet were blocks of ice even if your hands were always too warm.” A laugh escaped him, small and unsteady. “You sang badly,” Julian said, his mouth tightening around the memory. “You knew you sang badly. That never stopped you…never stopped us.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, swallowing. This was what he had. Starfleet had a date of death, his family had his possessions and presumably some sort of item to reflect the loss of their son. Julian just had this medallion and memories.

Soon just memories. He looked at the medallion, tracing it for a long moment. “I needed this longer than I should have. It feels…like I am trying to hold onto you. It’s not right. I shouldn’t build you a cage when you never did that to me,” he swallowed and closed his eyes against the tears. “Nico…” He took a deeper breath and lowered the medallion into the hollow. The silver rested against dark earth, the chain folded close around it. For several seconds, he kept two fingers against the edge, unable to withdraw his hand.

He thought of Nico asleep beside him, dark hair untidy against the pillow. Nico laughing in Sickbay. Nico eating the mango messily enough for juice to run down his chin, his fingers, his wrist. Nico touching Julian’s chest and saying there you are when the heartbeat beneath his palm reassured him.

He covered it up carefully, frowning. “Rest, Nico,” he whispered and smiled, tears spilling over. “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince…And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,” he whispered and stood. It looked undisturbed, like there was nothing there. He wiped his face with his hands, not caring about any dirt.

He tipped his head back, feeling the heat, the warmth, the tears. He breathed in the warm air, smelled the trees and the flowers, the rolling hills…the beauty of this sacred place. And he bowed his head, opening his eyes slowly.

It felt like it was done. That something was…over. It hurt. But he had hurt before and gotten better. “Goodbye, Nico,” he whispered before he turned and started walking, back the way he had come, feeling both lighter and heavier.

end

 

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