Let The Ice Take You [2/2]

Posted on Sat Apr 25th, 2026 @ 6:30am by Lieutenant JG Elen Rell & Sergeant Jace Morven
Edited on on Sat Apr 25th, 2026 @ 6:31am

2,019 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: Holodeck 2, USS Guinevere
Timeline: Early 2389

Continued from part 1

It happened fast enough that she only had time for a startled little sound before her balance went sideways and the rest of her followed. She did not crash. She folded into it badly but not dangerously, landing more on one hip than flat, her hands coming down late and not doing much except making her laugh the moment the shock of it passed. “Oh, brilliant,” she said from the ice, brushing hair out of her face with one gloved hand while laughter kept catching in her voice. “Absolutely majestic. Textbook elegance.” She lifted her head properly and looked at her palms. “Love holodeck safeties. Not even an ice burn or ripped gloves.”

Jace had stopped moving the second she went down, using the skate's edge to stop himself in his tracks out of instinct. He hadn't stopped because he thought she was badly hurt. She wasn’t, he could tell that much from the sound of it and from the immediate laugh. But his body had reacted before thought, weight shifting, focus narrowing, reading for impact, for injury, for whether he would need to get to her quickly. By the time that calculation finished, he was already moving toward her, slower than before but also somehow surer, the lessons of the last minute already working their way into his balance.

When he reached her, he held out a hand down to her, out of instinct more than anything else. Get her up, get her moving...always stay moving.

Elen looked up at him and smiled at once, warm enough that even he could feel the shape of it before he wanted to think too hard on why. “Thank you,” she said, taking it.

He pulled her up carefully, not hauling, not overcommitting on a surface like this, his other hand briefly coming to her forearm when one of her skates slipped again under her weight. The contact lasted no longer than needed, more out of habit than anything else.

She dusted her hands down the front of her coat and over her leggings, more checking by instinct than because she was hurt, and Jace’s eyes followed the motion for a second before the words came. “You fell,” he said, quiet, the dryness in it faint but there.

“Yes, thank you, somehow by some miracle I had noticed,” Elen said, laughter still threatening under the words as she looked herself over one last time and then up at him. “That was not my most convincing piece of teaching. But I feel I should get points for style.”

He kept looking at her, not the joke but the way she had gone down. The lack of panic. The fact she had not locked up before she hit. “You didn’t brace,” he said after a second, slower now, as if he was still turning it over.

That changed something in her expression for a moment. He couldn't understand exactly what, but the glow in her eyes faded and became a little more...withdrawn. “No,” she said, and this time the answer came with less amusement and more thought. Her fingers moved to the fur on her coat, stroking it lightly, a tiny repetitive motion that seemed to calm the energy in her just enough to let the thought settle. “If I had, I probably would’ve made it worse. If you tense and try to stop it halfway, that’s when you twist something, or land awkwardly, or make a proper mess of it. Better to go with it a bit, even if it’s annoying.”

Jace’s eyes stayed on her as she talked. He could tell she was working up to something, her shoulders hunching a little under the red coat, her hands rubbing together and then over her hips. He knew that with explosions, if you couldn't get into cover. Exhale as it was happening, get all the air out of your lungs...go slack and hope for the best, that the air pressure wouldn't pop your organs. Good with falls too, so the logic was there. Just...most people couldn't stop the instinct to brace.

“Mum used to say that,” Elen added, the words coming more quietly now, as if the thought had arrived and she hadn’t really tried to stop it. “Not about skating specifically. Just...in general about any sport, or when I was getting all...antsy jumpy overstimulated. That if you fight every bad thing like it’s a wall, you’ll only break yourself on it...sometimes, you need to follow the movement, go slack...no bracing.” She let out a breath through her nose, small and uneven with memory rather than distress. “Which sounded deeply irritating when I was younger, because obviously if something was bad my instinct was to throw myself at it until it stopped. Still sort of is, to be honest...but been around enough things to fall off now to...embrace that lesson a bit more.”

A faint smile touched her mouth then, but it was softer than her usual one, the brightness edged by something older and sadder. Her eyes had gone out over the ice now rather than to him. “So...confession. The dream I had last night...she was skating with me. And then there was...the sound of alarms. I turned around...and you were there, and there was blood...and it wasn't just you, it was all my friends,” she said, her thumb still rubbing against the fur. “And then I woke up with that stupid feeling where a dream has got into your ribs and won’t leave. I didn't like it...so, I want to erase the bad with good. The bad memory with a good one. Like skating with a friend.”

There was enough life back in the end of that sentence to let him know she was not falling apart under it. Still, the shape of it sat with him. Memory intruding without invitation. The body remembering something and dragging the rest of you after it. He knew that. Knew it too well. The word friend sat awkward against him and he swallowed, looking away.

“I don’t miss her all the time,” Elen went on, quieter again, like she was trying to be accurate more than dramatic. “It’s not like that. It’s not every day, or even every week sometimes. I’m busy. I have a life. I’m okay and it’s been years since she died and I had enough therapy back then to process it… But even then something catches, just wrong enough, and there she is. A smell. A sentence. A dream. And...” Her shoulders lifted faintly before settling again. “Yeah. I miss her.”

Jace was watching her...not her eyes, he didn't meet those, but the way she was moving. He didn't have anything useful to offer, nothing that could ease the hurt. Hers...looked like a settled thing. Reminded him of Martinez. Maybe even reminded him a little bit of the look Colonel Moriarty got in his eyes now and then. No, Jace Morven couldn't understand the grief of mourning family. But he had been around grief enough to know he could stay, that it was something to offer. To stay and listen. And he had. He had heard Elen talk about her mother before. From where he stood, Colonel Ilyana Rell had been the sort of officer who saw her people.

The silence stretched for a long moment and he heard her sniff, saw the way she moved to wipe her nose on her sleeve. “She sounds like a good officer,” he said, his voice level...a bit rough.

She looked at him, surprise flickering through her face before it softened into something gentler. “Yeah,” she said, and now her voice was little more than that. “She was.” She let out a breath and then looked around before she started moving. She went gliding...a few graceful spins.

Jace watched her move, watched the placement of her feet…the spins, the way she held her arms out. For a moment she didn’t look like Elen Rell, the chaotic engineer who would run around with her not quite uniform, not quite grooming standard...

“I don’t remember mine,” he suddenly said, the words escaping him without any real thought. They were not even to fill the silence...more his mind had taken that long to process the conversation.

She stopped a foot from him, just watching his face. She never heard him speak of his past in that way. She got glimpses, sure. But most of it was his...military career. His time in the Federation. This? This pre-dated all that. This was...something that had been with him since Turkana. She wasn’t sure what to say. She was sorry? No. No, he wouldn’t like that. “That’s...it’s hard to know there’s something there and still not be able to reach it,” she said softly.

His shoulders shifted the slightest amount, not a shrug, not dismissal, just an acknowledgment that he had heard her. His eyes stayed on the ice, because it was easier. “I remember maybe a voice,” he said after another second, the sentence coming more slowly, like he did not say these things often enough for them to come without resistance. “Not properly. Not enough to know anything from it. No face.” His mouth tightened a fraction. “Nothing useful.”

Elen swallowed, watching him for a moment. She wanted to disagree. But then…she wasn’t one to judge, or steer. She could accept he didn't find it useful. “Well,” she said after a moment, some of her usual warmth beginning to return, careful at first, “for what it’s worth, you can borrow mine a bit.” Her mouth curved. “She’d probably like you. I mean, she definitely had a thing for competent Ground Forces troopers, which in retrospect probably says more about her than is healthy, but still.” The smile pulled a little wider, more herself now. “And then she’d tell you to stop being so tense before you gave yourself a headache.”

That got the smallest shift at the corner of his mouth. Not enough to be called a smile by anyone who didn’t know to look for it. Enough for Elen, whose face brightened at once because she absolutely did know to look for it.

“Unlikely,” Jace said, but there was less edge in it now, less of that automatic refusal and more something dry.

“Oh no,” Elen said, the energy in her coming back more fully now as she pushed herself a little way backwards and then turned to face him properly, arms out for balance. “Very likely. I can hear it already. Sergeant Morven, unclench before I do it for you.”

He looked at her, then at the ice again, and exhaled slowly. No smile, no ease in that sense, just...watching her. Awaiting the next steps.

“Come on,” she said, and this time there was something gentler under the encouragement, less determined to prove a point and more just there with him in it. “Again. Smaller push. And less acting like the ice has personally offended you.”

“You’re projecting,” Jace said, the word awkward, not something he used day to day...a borrowed word. But he met her eyes, briefly. “Just because you fell won’t mean I will.”

Elen laughed, her green eyes shining at that. “Okay, now I did not order sass with my Sergeant,” she said with a grin before she pushed off, eyes shining. “Come on, Jace....I’ll race you!”

He let out a breath, watching her on the ice before he pushed off…not even thinking about it as he moved. The movement was automatic now, balance figured out. It was just them, the cold, the ice....

And the sound of blades on ice.

OFF:

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

&

Lieutenant Junior Grade Elen Rell
Engineer
USS Guinevere

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