Enigma Variations

Posted on Sun Sep 28th, 2025 @ 4:17pm by Commander Rylen Lyo & Sergeant Jace Morven

2,910 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Pilot - "The Gate"
Location: Gym
Timeline: Early 2389

The lights in the gym were dimmer than usual, the mirrored wall set to plain grey. Only one figure occupied the space, stationed at the punching bag, body shifting with each measured strike.

Jace Morven preferred it this way. Empty was better. When the gym was his alone, he could make small adjustments, changes that would vanish as soon as someone else entered. He had learned the phrasing the computer would accept. It was a quiet victory, one of those things no one else needed to know.

His jacket lay on the bench, combadge still fastened to it. He wore FGF combat trousers, boots braced firm on the mat, and a vest darkened until the blue looked almost black. Sweat traced his skin, hair sticking damp across his forehead. His eyes stayed fixed on the bag. Keep the focus there. Keep the rhythm.

It was not aggression, not release. Routine. The hour mattered. An hour gave the body order, gave the mind something steady. Unless someone interrupted. More often than not it was Elen. He had come to expect her in those moments between duty, the shape of her arriving as if she belonged to the pattern.

He stopped at last, stepping back with control. His fists uncurled, muscles loosened by habit. Breath left him slow, measured, as if nothing had pressed at him in the first place.

The door of the Guinevere’s gym slid open. Rylen Lyo, newly assigned Executive Officer, strolled in casually and removed his crimson red hooded sweatshirt. His less than finely-tuned empathic senses had told him that another being was present; Lyo knew the face from the personnel files he had reviewed upon being assigned to the Guinevere.

Lyo himself was dressed in purple silk shorts and a white tank top that hugged his muscular frame, as well as well-worn athletic shoes. He eyed the other occupant up and down, his lips turning into an approving smirk. One didn’t need to be empathic to understand what the XO was thinking.

“Sergeant,” said Lyo in acknowledgment as he tossed his jacket on one of the empty benches.

Jace looked at him, straightening as his eyes moved over the other man without making it too obvious. The purple was a shade he had not seen before. The shoes were worn but cared for. The new XO carried himself with effortless authority. He looked like someone who could pass Starfleet physicals easily enough, but not pick up a knife and slit a throat. That mattered, if only because Jace’s mind was not running through how to take him out in a fight. It lowered the threat a little. Or maybe it was because this space had become familiar over the past year, enough that he no longer tensed at every arrival.

He was watching him. Jace shifted into a more formal stance, wondering if the man was sizing him up because he was Ground Forces. The smirk was harder to read, something in it familiar though he could not place it. “Sir,” he said quietly.

“As you were, Sergeant. As you were,” said Lyo cocking his head slightly to the right. “I don’t need my people tensing up around me. It makes things a lot more awkward than they need to be.” Lyo reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small bottle of water. “Here. It’s from a spring on the northern continent of Jevathia II. Best drinking water in the alpha quadrant.”

Jace’s eyes dropped to the bottle, then lifted back to the man’s face. Just long enough to weigh the expression, to judge whether refusal would show as defiance. The smirk was still there, easy, not sharp. He looked back at the bottle. Jevathia II. He had never heard of it. Imported water on a ship with replicators. It felt like a joke, or a move he could not read. But the offer had been made and Jace knew he had to respond somehow. Was he thirsty? The answer was no. Hydrating for the sake of it made no sense, it would only make it harder to move. He shook his head once. “I’m fine.” His voice was even and he eased his shoulders. Not much, just enough to shake some of the tension loose. If the XO wanted it, Jace would try as much as he could.

“Suit yourself,” said Lyo, tucking the bottle back into the jacket pocket. “I was just trying to break the ice with you.”

Jace gave the faintest nod, but there was a slight tightening between his eyes as he thought about the words. He knew the expression but, “Break the ice,” he repeated quietly. Words that belonged to a language he never quite understood. He had never been good at the unspoken parts, the things that meant something other than what they said. His eyes went back to the XO. The silence held too long. He felt the weight of it and pushed himself to speak. “There’s no ice, sir,” he said at last. “The room’s too warm.” The line came out flat, more observation than humour, but something in it leaned awkwardly toward a joke. Not his kind of ground, it felt unsteady under his feet, but he tried it all the same.

The corners of Lyo’s mouth curved distinctly upward into a smile, a rare occasion for the Kriosian. He did not just hear the implied humor, he felt it. But it was different…almost stunted, unnatural. As if the young Sergeant did not really have a frame of reference for experiencing joy. Without hesitation, and mostly without his conscious control, Lyo’s empathic abilities burrowed gently beneath the surface of Sergeant Morven’s psyche. The pain and turmoil he brushed against in that singular instant was nearly enough to put Lyo to his knees.

Not knowing exactly how to react to what he has felt, Lyo said in a feeble whisper “I am so very sorry.”

Jace blinked, the words catching harder than their whisper. An apology, out of nowhere. His eyes narrowed slightly. The XO had smiled, then faltered, as if something else had intruded. The man looked Trill, at least from this angle, but the shape of his words felt wrong. Was he something else? And if so, why apologise? His stance straightened, shoulders locking square. “Sorry for what, sir?” The question came out low, edged more with confusion than challenge.

“I…” began Lyo, his azure eyes beginning to overflow from the pain whose surface that he had barely touched. “Kriosians are naturally empathic. So I am capable of feeling whatever you feel. It is a gift that is difficult to master fully.”

A muscle twitched in Jace’s cheek as he watched Lyo, his body tensing. Empathic. So he had felt something inside him and reacted to it. A small part of Jace wanted to run, pushed deep, but running had been drilled out of him long ago, when running meant death.

His heart rate had spiked at the confession. He forced it back down with a slow breath. His hands uncurled, as if tension could bleed out through them. He did not tell the man to stop. He did not snap. He remembered Terrow, a Betazoid soldier in his squad during the war, who sometimes could not control what bled through. You could not blame someone for what they could not master, even if you hated it.

“You apologising for what you felt, or for feeling it?” he asked. The words were flat, not bitter, almost curious. He was trying to understand, to pin down what the issue was. Reading between the lines had never been his ground. The XO’s eyes looked glassy now, the poise gone rigid, as if ice had run through his frame. Jace did not know what to do with that.

Lyo steadied himself, pausing for a moment to exhale deeply through his nose and regain a modicum of control. “I feel things through the lens of your perception, Sergeant. And when something is…” He trailed off, searching for the right words. “When something is traumatic, I want to take that pain away. Help see the beauty that is on the other side.” Lyo sat down on the bench next to his jacket. “I hope that makes sense.”

Jace stood still, the words hanging in the air. Traumatic. A label he had heard before, handed down by officers, doctors, counsellors. To them it explained everything about him, what he was. To him it was just life. His life. He had learned to hate the word, not for what it meant, but for what it implied. Weakness. Pity. Being an Other. His jaw worked once, then stilled. He kept his eyes on the XO, unblinking. His shoulders remained square, hands loose at his sides. The silence stretched long enough that the shape of it was its own answer.

When he did speak, the words came low, even. “It’s not yours to take away, sir.” Because it was not. The officer opposite might have felt something he thought was pain, but for Jace it was just what was inside. Was it pain? He did not know. It was not physical pain. Emotional pain was something else, but he was not sure if that was what he had. What he did know was that there was a softness in the words he did not know what to do with, and the unspoken language he could not read thrummed around him.

Rylen turned his palms upward and shrugged his shoulders, a gesture of surrender. “Maybe it’s because I caught a glimpse of the beauty behind it, and I want to help that beauty shine brighter. And off duty, I’m Rylen.”

The man’s body language was disarming. Open palms, the shrug. A physical cue Jace understood. It did not break his own tension, but confusion pressed at the edge. Beauty was a word he knew the meaning of, but it had never been applied to things like this. Or to him. The thought unsettled him more than he cared to admit. He pushed it aside before it could take hold.

What he could understand was the name offered. That gave him a framework he could work with, even if the weight of the man’s gaze still left him feeling a little too exposed. “Not entirely sure it is appropriate for a Ground Forces Sergeant to call the First Officer of the ship by their first name,” he said, the words carrying the faintest hint of dryness.

“I could make it an order,” said Rylen in a slightly teasing tone. “But if you’re not comfortable with calling me by my name, then don’t. What should I call you, besides Sergeant?” Lyo knew the Sergeant’s name; he wanted the younger man to (hopefully) feel slightly more at ease, and part of that is addressing each other in the preferred manner.

Jace’s shoulders tightened at the words, that he could make it an order. The old instinct, sharp and immediate, pressed down. Power play, the hierarchy, the differences in position...but then he clocked the tone underneath it. Not a threat or a sharp command, but...teasing. He wouldn't have caught the shape of it a year ago, but Elen had made a habit of throwing jokes at him so often he had slowly started to understand the shape of them. His stance eased, though not fully. “Morven,” he said, his eyes on the other man. He kept studying him, the way he talked, the way he moved. There was something about it he had never seen before and he couldn't put his finger on what it was.

Rylen felt that Morven had relaxed slightly, and also felt what seemed to be a sort of detached curiosity. Maybe the ice wasn’t breaking, but it was starting to thaw just a bit. But how could they resolve this mutual intrigue? Rylen had an idea, and he hoped the handsome Sergeant would be receptive. “I usually take a walk in the Arboretum at the end of my shift each day,” he said. “There is a small grove of zaath trees there, as well as some other flora unique to my home planet of Krios Prime. They remind me of home.” He paused, looking down at the floor almost sheepishly. “If you would ever like to join me for a walk, the invitation is open. 1830 hours.”

Jace’s mouth moved before he thought about it. “Zaath trees.” He echoed it the way the other man had said it, the sound careful as he stored the way to say it away in his mind. Then he caught himself, eyes lifting back to Rylen. He watched him, assessing for a long moment. “I’m not the type for walks,” he said, voice even. For a moment he just stood there, then the question came straight out, stripped of polish. “Why me?”

The XO shrugged slightly. “I don’t entirely know. Maybe I touched something in your mind that I felt drawn to. Plus, you’re really handsome…” Rylen blushed, the upper portions of his cheeks flushing a cherry red to contrast with his fair complexion. “That always makes me curious.”

Jace felt the words catch in him. Handsome. He knew the word, but struggled with finding it applied to him, it just did not fit anywhere comfortably. And the reminder that the man had already touched his mind sat like grit beneath it. He did not blame him, not if it was something he could not control, but he did not like it either. His eyes stayed on the XO, steady, trying to weigh him the way he would weigh terrain or a weapon. The blush threw him. For a man who carried himself like easy authority, it did not fit. It made him look less like command and more like something else. “I’m not used to people saying things like that,” Jace said at last, voice low, even. “And I don’t know what you want from me.”

Lyo turned his eyes away, instead choosing to fixate on a random point on the wall. “I don’t know what I want from you either, Morven,” he confessed. “I guess I was just looking for an opening to become better acquainted. Perhaps someday even…be friends? And if people don’t tell you that you’re handsome, they need an eye exam.”

Jace let the silence sit after the words. The XO’s eyes had gone to the wall, not him. That felt closer to truth than anything else he had said and loosened the tightness in his shoulders a little. “Acquainted I can understand,” Jace said, voice low, almost thoughtful. “Friends is harder.” Plain fact, no edge, just words he had not always found easy. Some pushed past his barriers, but he had never called anyone a friend. Did not mean the sentiment was not there though. The compliment he set aside. He had no place for it. A short shake of his head moved it out of the air. “I don’t do well on walks. Not if you want words. I’ll spend the time mapping the terrain. Better in here, or even the mess.”

A (very) small smile crept across Lyo’s face. They were making progress, the two of them. The Sergeant’s personnel file had described him as ‘a difficult nut to crack.’ That was not an imprecise assessment. “We don’t have to decide now. I’m certain I will run into you…unless you prefer to make formal plans?”

Jace noted the smile, smaller this time, less of the smirk. Genuine, maybe. He weighed the words. Formal plans meant no sudden ambush, no one catching him off guard. But they carried pressure, an expectation he would not be able to meet. Random meant no pressure to perform, but it could come at any time, anywhere. That was its own kind of tension. The truth was he did not have an answer. “Not much for plans outside duty,” he said at last, voice even. “But I don’t avoid people either.”

“Maybe we can just play it by ear, then.” Lyo said with finality.

Jace gave a curt nod at the words, looking at the man. He itched to get back to the bag...but the rhythm was broken. His heart and breathing was down to base level, his muscles had cooled down. Starting again under the gaze of this man...no. He moved to his discarded jacket, putting it on. "Next time," he said, although whether it was to Lyo or to the bag was unclear.

Lyo could tell by his emotional timbre that Morven was finished with the conversation. As much as the XO enjoyed the interplay between them…the many layers, the space between and underneath the young Sergeant’s words…Rylen knew that Jace was ready to move beyond. And yet, as he had at the onset of their conversation, Lyo felt a palpable uncertainty within himself; he and Jace had exchanged words, but had they really talked? Rylen supposed that their next encounter would answer that query.

---


Commander Rylen Lyo
Executive Officer
USS Guinevere

&

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

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