Bruised and Stubborn and Alive Part 2

Posted on Sun Jul 19th, 2026 @ 4:57pm by Lieutenant JG Elen Rell & Sergeant Jace Morven

2,197 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Pilot - "The Gate"
Location: USS Guinevere
Timeline: A few days after the battle

Continued from Part 1


Elen’s mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile this time. She pulled one knee in closer, bracing herself so she could lean deeper into the panel, her shoulder pressing against the edge of the recess as she reached past the insulated conduit and checked the coupling by touch. “Possibly, one day,” she conceded, letting out a long and soft breath.

His eyes snapped to her face, cold and sharp. Not angry, not exactly, and not fear either...but the kind of look he got when something in the room had become a threat and his body had already decided before the rest of him caught up. “That’s not an answer,” he said, finding his throat dry with it.

“It is,” she said, more quietly now. She did not look away from him straight away, which took more effort than she wanted it to. Then she reached back into the wall, fingers finding the next join by touch. “It is just not one you like.”

Jace’s hand closed around the lamp a little tighter. The beam stayed steady anyway, because his hands knew how to be steady even when the rest of him did not. An old, sick feeling settled in his chest, almost a certainty of something that was coming. And he was powerless to stop it. “You’re not Ground Forces," he said, as if that made a difference. He knew it wouldn't. He said it, and it was as useless as the pleas of a man bleeding out.

“No,” Elen agreed, and she sucked in a slow breath. Oh, didn't she just know it. She shifted her weight, stretched one leg out with a small wince, then tucked it back beneath her when the movement pulled too sharply at her hip. Her fingers went back to the edge of the relay housing, checking that the microseal strip had held. Her voice had sharpened a little, not hostile, but his words had pressed on an old bruise in her soul. “I am generally aware of that. The lack of armour is a clue, as is the fact that my instinctive response to a boarding party was to throw an ODN decoupler at someone’s head and hope Engineering appreciated the theatre.”

Jace looked down at the tool in her hand, then back into the recess, because the wall was easier than her face. “It did not have to be you,” he finally said. "It shouldn't have been you."

“It had to be me, this time,” she said, not with any bitterness, but with calm acceptance. She shifted the applicator to one hand while the other continued to check. “I was there. I knew what would happen if they kept firing blind into the room. I knew which consoles were already unstable, which panels had failed, which relays were live, which coolant line had split and which ones could still be coaxed into behaving if we had another fifteen minutes.” She glanced down at the toolkit, chose the probe without looking too long at the labels, then leaned in again, her shoulder pressing against the casing as she worked it carefully past the insulated conduit. “And I knew one hit to the warp core with a meson weapon and the core would break. Not need to be ejected...it would kill us all. I didn't know if they knew, so I assumed they didn't...hence...plan B for Bait. Make myself the loudest, most annoying thing in the room and tactics fly out of the window.”

Jace looked at her for a long moment, his eyes unreadable, then set the lamp down against the edge of the recess so the light stayed where she needed it. He reached for the roll of microseal strips, caught the edge of one with his thumb and pulled it free before offering it to her. “That sounds like something you thought through,” he said flatly, because he could see her logic...he didn't like it, but he could see it.

“It was a very busy three seconds,” Elen admitted, taking the strip from him. Her fingers pressed it carefully into place over the relay housing, smoothing it down with her thumb. “But yes. I thought. I did not throw myself in front of them because I had a sudden romantic urge to become a cautionary tale in Engineering training, or because I had some...misguided sense of heroism. I did it because the alternative looked worse.”

He made a low sound that was not quite agreement. His eyes moved over the repair, then to the way her hair was slowly escaping her scarf. “Bad odds,” he said. “No cover once they noticed.”

“Oh, absolutely,” she said, so readily that his frown deepened. She smoothed the edge of the microseal strip down with her thumb once more, then reached for the probe beside her knee. “Being right does not make the odds any better. It only makes them necessary, and necessity has a nasty habit of turning up in a borrowed coat and pretending it was invited.”

Jace watched her for a moment, eyes narrowing slightly as he shifted his weight where he was crouched. “That sounds like poetry,” he said, suspiciously.

“That was me,” Elen said, and for a moment a small, tired smile pulled at her mouth. “Trust me, if I start quoting Tennyson, you'll know it is poetry. Or Yeats. Or Gill. Or Ra'Hanna...poetry is unmistakably poetic, not...you know...funny phrases.”

He looked at her profile, the way her lips pulled, thinking about it. He knew none of the names, but the first one had put itself in his head. “Who is Tennyson?” There was no hesitation in the question, no embarrassment attached to it. He asked it the same way he would ask what a tool did if he did not recognise it, because Elen had never treated not knowing as a weakness, only as a gap that could be filled if someone was willing to explain.

She reached for the probe and missed it by several inches because she was still watching him from the corner of her eye, and he picked it up without comment, turning it so the grip sat properly against her palm. “A dead poet who would have had a field day with Starfleet.” Elen’s fingers closed around the probe, dark residue and sealant marking the side of her thumb. “Very noble, very doomed, lots of striving and seeking and not yielding. Terrible influence on engineers and captains with dramatic cheekbones.”

Jace absorbed that in silence, filing away the pieces that seemed useful: dead poet, noble, doomed, bad influence. He shifted the lamp again when she leaned back into the panel. “Do not strive into weapon fire.”

Elen stared at him for half a second, then huffed a laugh that loosened something in the air between them. It was not a bright laugh, not clean after the days they had just had, but it was real enough to reach her eyes. She shifted the probe in her hand, tapped the blunt end lightly against the edge of the recess as if committing the phrase to memory, then leaned back into the panel. “I will put that on a plaque in Engineering. Lieutenant JG Rell’s revised operational philosophy: do not strive into weapon fire.”

Jace watched the movement of her hand rather than the smile on her face, then gave a small nod as if the plaque had been approved through the proper chain of command. But truth was, he reacted to the way her shoulders had eased, the way her neck now moved. She was no longer holding herself as tense. She felt...less dangerous like this. Less like how he imagined her sprinting across Engineering with meson weapons firing at her. “Good.”

Elen’s smile stayed for a second longer, then softened as she reached deeper into the recess, her voice turning slightly muffled by the wall. “You are aware that I heard things too,” she suddenly said.

Jace’s posture changed. Only slightly. His shoulders did not stiffen so much as settle, the way they did when a corridor noise became footsteps or a quiet room became a possible threat. “What things?” he asked, because he was somewhat used to rumours about him...none that flattering, but he pretended never to hear. Or care.

“That you went for the schoolroom.” Elen kept her eyes on her work when she said it, because she understood him well enough now to know that some truths were easier for him if they were not handed over face to face. She adjusted the probe against the coupling, waited for the tiny diagnostic light to blink green, then shifted it a fraction deeper into the recess. “That there was one of those things outside the door and that you took it down before it got in...hand to hand, if T'Valla is to be believed...because to be fair, T’Valla looked as if she was one bad afternoon away from sewing you a cape and declaring you the patron saint of not dying when people expect you to. You're definitely shortening her life by pulling stunts like that.”

Jace turned his head enough to look at her properly. His face did not change much, but the lamp dipped before he corrected it, and his eyes moved over her profile as if trying to work out whether the joke was hiding something sharper. “I do not need a cape. And...it wasn't a stunt.”

“I know. It was Sergeant Morven doing what he usually does...going in and doing what needs to be done.” Elen’s voice stayed perfectly serious as she leaned back into the panel, one hand braced against the wall while the other worked the probe loose. She was more or less done; now it was fine-tuning...and also, by doing it slower, it made it easier...not for her, but for him. She could talk and not look at his face. “Capes would get caught in things. Very hazardous in Jefferies tubes. Also, I suspect you would complain about the fabric.”

Jace watched the probe come free, then held out his hand for it without looking away from her face. “I would not wear one.”

“That would make sewing it for you a little disappointing, yes. Or even replicating it!” She passed him the probe and reached for the next tool, her mouth twitching even though she kept her attention on the panel. “Especially after T’Valla had gone to all the trouble of choosing something suitably dramatic and difficult to launder.”

He looked away first, which was as close as she got to a victory. His eyes moved to the opposite wall, to the new patch welded over a place where the metal had buckled inward from damage that had started where no one could see it. His jaw worked once, and for a second his hand lifted as if he might touch the patch, then stopped before he did. “They were children,” he said bluntly, as if he was giving her a mission report. “Door was holding. Maybe not for long. Teacher was ready to use a broken chair.”

Elen’s hand stilled inside the panel. She did not turn to look at him straight away, but her shoulders shifted with a slow breath, and when she spoke her voice had gone softer, the Martian lilt of it taking over. “And Engineering had people too...and a warp core.”

Jace looked at her, taking a slow breath. He didn't like that the logic was solid. He didn't like that she was right, in a sense. His fingers tightened around the probe she had passed him, the metal pressing into his palm until he noticed and loosened his grip. “It shouldn't have had to be you.”

“Maybe. But in the moment, I...didn't see myself as having a choice..." she paused, pulling back slowly from what she had been doing. "I am not saying we are the same, Jace,” she looked at him then, making sure that part was clear before she reached for the cloth tucked beside her knee and wiped sealant residue from the side of her thumb. “We are very much not the same when it comes to...reactions. You see a threat and your whole body knows how to answer it, you...just do it. I see a failing relay and start emotionally negotiating with plasma relays and chips. But in that moment, we were both doing the thing we could do with what we had.” Her fingers slowed on the cloth, then stopped. “You went to the schoolroom because there were children behind the door. I ran because Jesse needed an opening, and there was a warp core at risk from being hit by meson weapons...and because for one small, ridiculous moment I could make myself more interesting than both of them.”

To be continued in part 3

Sergeant Jace Morven
Platoon Sergeant, Alpha Squad
Federation Ground Forces Detachment
USS Guinevere

&

Lt. jg Elen Rell
Engineer
USS Guinevere

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