Residual: Part VI - Carried, Not Broken

Posted on Thu Nov 27th, 2025 @ 5:01pm by Sergeant Jace Morven

2,161 words; about a 11 minute read

Dominion Frontline Deployment -- January 2375

The rain here clings like oil. It seeps into the seams of the armour, slides down the skin, leaves the smell of rot where it touches. Not the kind that clears anything. This rain just weighs you down. Apparently it’s natural here, with the limited sunlight. I just know it manages to somehow soak through material that is meant to repel moisture.

We call them trenches, but they are not. Just broken stone channels cut between dead structures and rusting machinery. Shelter in name only, but maybe there was something here once. I can’t see it. The Jem’Hadar hit the eastern approach two nights ago and the air still stings with coolant burn and charred flesh.

The soil under my boots is soft and slick. Each step sinks a little, water pooling before the ground takes it in. My left foot aches with the same dull pull it has carried for years, a bone broken in childhood that never healed clean. I note it, the way I always do, and let it go. It has never stopped me.

I crouch against the wall, rifle tight across my chest. My left shoulder is raw from a dive that caught the edge of a disruptor blast. Skin scraped, fabric torn. Pain enough to notice but not enough to count. Not when the sky is still burning above us, not when we all have cuts and scrapes.

Across from me Martinez sits with their back to the stone. Their skin is paler than usual, dirt streaked across it, a few flecks of blood on the cheek that are not theirs. Their shoulders keep a tremor they cannot smooth out. Even with the noise around us, rain and metal shifting and the distant thrum of fire overhead, I can hear the uneven pull of their breath.

We lost Raimi in the night.

The medic worked over her in the mud, hands moving quick, pressing, sealing, injecting, but I knew it would not matter. It wasn’t necessarily the injury that told me, but way her skin changed texture and colour. Kerren screamed her name until his voice broke, and Banik pulled him in tight with one arm while the other kept her rifle ready, eyes never leaving the dark as if the Jem’Hadar might break through again at any second. Terrow froze, eyes wide, face hollow, and when he dropped his phaser rifle I grabbed his collar and shoved it back into his hands, forced his body to move because stillness would get him killed, or sink too deep into what he felt radiating off others.

The medic’s voice cracked when he said it. Gone. One word. That was all.

Raimi lay still. Her red hair was plastered to her cheek by the rain, somehow still with some waves in it despite the helmet. She had done it in a salon during shore leave, called it her indulgence with that laugh of hers, like she was letting herself take up more space than the war usually allowed. Allowing herself to do things she had done in peacetime just because it made her feel good. That memory pressed harder than the sight in front of me.

Martinez moved in without a word, stripping her armour piece by piece, careful even though she was already gone. They slung it over their shoulder, heavy with mud and blood, and when I stepped toward them to take it they only shook their head and kept moving.

Now they sit against the wall, quiet. Mud hardened on the cuffs of their fatigues, helmet dented where it hit stone. They have not spoken. Have not eaten. Only silence, and I watch them, because I know it carries more than words ever could.

I see it before it happens. A flicker across Martinez’s face, the kind of shift you only catch when you have been watching someone too long. The line of their mouth trembles, their eyes drag down, and then their hands come up to cover it, pressing hard against their brow as if they can keep it contained. The sound that escapes them is low, broken, pulled from somewhere deep. It doesn’t sound human. I’ve heard it before through the years.

I have seen grief before. I know how it takes shape in people. But seeing it in Martinez is different. They have held so much in since their brother, carried it without letting it spill, and now it breaks open in front of me. It cuts deeper because it is them, because for once I am seeing them without the guard they always keep in place.

Something twists hard in my chest. I am built for the other parts of this life, the violence, the killing, the discipline of keeping myself alive under fire. I am not built for this, for the raw edge of loss when there is nothing to fight and nothing to fix. Still I move closer and drop into a crouch at their side, close enough to mark the ground with them, not close enough to touch.

They do not look at me. Their voice scrapes out rough, words forced through clenched fingers. “I keep seeing her. Every time I close my eyes. She trusted me. I told her she’d be fine. Told her to cover left, and…”

“You did not kill her.” My voice is low, steady. It’s a truth, because they hadn’t. The war did, the enemy, the Jem’Hadar soldiers. It could have been Martinez. It could have been me. Or any of us. But it was Raimi.

Martinez lets out a laugh without humour, just air catching sharp in their throat. “Didn’t save her either.”

The silence holds between us. I don’t have an answer for that. Around us the trench keeps moving: boots dragging through mud, comms spitting, curses thrown when someone slips. Life carrying on because it has to, the fight waiting its turn again.

I do not know what a person should say in moments like this. I have never had the words for it. What I have is time, and that has to be enough. I notice the split in Martinez’s lips, the way they are cracked and dry, and I realise they have not been drinking. So I unclip my canteen and pass it across without comment.

Their hand shakes as they take it. They drink, still not looking at me, but they do not move away either.

I stay quiet for a long minute, eyes scanning the trench, listening to the rain. Then I hear myself say, “You remember last rotation? That bar. The Trill.” I don’t know why I say it, why I break the silence. Maybe it is like when you reset a broken finger, you do something to distract from what’s happening.

Martinez blinks, less break in their voice now. “You mean the guy who kissed you like you were real?”

It is not the first time I have given them a piece of it. Over the weeks I have said small things when Martinez is keeping watch with me, when they have talked about things that they observe, or think. I told them that it was a Trill. That it was a man, that he had fair hair. That the kiss broke the moment. Nothing more than that. But for me, even that much feels like more than I have let anyone else touch. A sound slips from me, low, closer to a grunt than a laugh. “Yeah. Him.”

Martinez lets out a laugh, rough and ugly but real. “You let someone kiss you. That’s the most… person-like thing I’ve seen you do.”

I do not smile, but something in me shifts, easing enough that it shows in my shoulders. Their eyes lift and meet mine, red-rimmed and sharp with everything they are holding back. I hear myself say, “You’re allowed to grieve. You’re not dead yet.”

The words are not for me. I have never found a way to let myself show it. But for them, I want to set it down plain, so they know they can, that it doesn’t make them less.

Their jaw tightens and they hold my gaze. “I hate this fucking war,” they say, voice carrying through the trench like they do not care who hears it. Some people glance out way and I look back at them until they turn away. Martinez needs to say it. It matters more than those who want to puff up their chest.

I nod once as I look back at Martinez. “Yeah,” I say. Inside I weigh it. I do not know if I hate it the way they do. I do not know if I hate it at all, or if I only fit too well inside it. What I do hate is what it does to them, to the people around me, the way it strips them down and leaves them with nothing but memory.

So I stay where I am. Martinez leans back against the wall, eyes shut, shoulders sinking into the stone. I keep my rifle ready, eyes on the dark, letting them have the quiet.

FGF Barracks, USS Guinevere, 2388

I look down at the cup in my hand, moving it slowly to see the liquid still inside of it. The heat of it has died down, the scent of the mint isn’t as strong…there’s a trace, nothing more. I lift it to my lips and take a sip. Still clean and sweet, soothing the memory of how the air had tasted when Raimi had died, when Martinez seemed to almost disappear into the grief. When I close my eyes, I still see the wildness in their eyes.

Raimi had been with the 77th before I arrived and somehow Tho hadn’t broken her down. She was a steady head in the squad, always there to check on them all. She did it naturally in a way I’ve never been able to, as if it was as easy for her as breathing air. Terrow more than anyone anchored himself to her, most likely that Betazoid telepathy and empathy finding her less difficult to deal with than the rest of us. I know Betazoids find me difficult to read, Martinez was always good at locking themselves down too…Kerren had been all fire, not reckless, just a flare in the night and Banik…Banik never took prisoners. I saw the shape of Raimi’s absence in the squad in the days after, how they’d all drift a little. It changed the shape of us. Any replacement was accepted in, but it was never the same.

I got over it. What stays with me is not just that loss but the shape of Martinez’s grief. I had seen death before. Understood it. One of us falls, you push forward, make the adjustment, keep moving. That was the rhythm I knew. Martinez did not move on, not at first. I kept seeing it in their eyes and there was nothing I could do. And that was the part I’ve never been able to figure out. Not death itself, it happens to us all. It’s rarely personal, it can happen at any moment and I never really consider much beyond that when it happens, it happens. Until then I keep moving.

No, what I don’t understand is how it can just break someone open. At the time I told myself it wasn’t my place to sort it out. It was another piece of kit, part of the armour. You didn’t mourn, you endured. Except, it wasn’t really true. Not then and not now.

I take it in, just in a different way. I took it and made it a weapon inside of me, a drive to do what I had to. Always available, always there to pull on when exhaustion was setting in or when the grip on my phaser rifle felt less secure.

I can’t say I have changed. I still do it, still use it. The difference was that Martinez felt the loss. I just carried it as another weapon. I did it then and I did it when Vel died, took the feeling inside I didn’t understand and moved forward, weapon ready and nothing on my mind except completing my mission.

I take another sip, slower this time. It sits heavy in my chest. The tea is still sweet. Still warm enough to notice. It’s a strange thing, how a cup of mint in the dark can steady me more than all the armour I wear through the day. And right now, it has to be enough.

---

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

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