How Trust is Earned

Posted on Sun Jun 8th, 2025 @ 11:37am by Sergeant Jace Morven & Commander Cressida Vale MD

3,186 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: USS Guinevere
Timeline: 2388

There was something oddly still about the way Sergeant Morven stood in sickbay. He had made his way there from the Federation Ground Forces detachment aboard the USS Guinevere, following a route he knew only from ship schematics, not experience.

His steely-blue eyes were unfocused, his expression blank. He breathed...slowly, evenly...the rise and fall of his chest beneath the uniform the only sign of life. Then he blinked, and the world came back into focus. Sickbay. Sterile-smelling. Bright.

He'd been ordered in for a medical exam. Routine, they said. It didn't feel like routine. It felt like a test.

Don't react. Don't snap. People will be close to you with things that could hurt you.

A mantra, of sorts. One of the few that worked.

He stepped forward and flagged down a nurse, quietly stating he was there for a medical. The nurse directed him toward a dark-haired woman.

She stood with quiet confidence. Black hair, long and perfectly straight...in other words, nothing like his own. Average height for a human woman. Her skin had the healthy glow of someone who hadn't grown up in a slum, who had experienced proper nutrition growing up. Her frame was lean, strong. Martial arts, maybe. The balance of her stance gave it away. She'd be fast.

He would have to be faster. And brutal, if it ever came to that.

He approached in silence, giving no indication of his internal assessment. The look on his face was unreadable.

"Sergeant Jace Morven, reporting for physical examination," he said, voice flat. Statement of fact. Nothing more.

His arrival had been expected, of course. Lt. Colonel Llewelyn had worked with sickbay to schedule medical exams for all of the newly arrived ground forces personnel. Some would be simple, and could be done in small groups to speed the process.

Others, however, needed a more delicate touch.

The schedule was blocked off so that the only one patient would be present at a time. Barring an emergency, sickbay would be empty save for the Chief Medical Officer, one nurse and two ground forces sentries. The latter two would hang back, able to respond to most problems but giving the patient plenty of privacy. Besides, Dr. Cressida Vale was confident that a) nothing would happen and b) if something did happen, she could defend herself long enough for someone to intervene.

She had learned since coming aboard how to work with the ground forces types. Sometimes it was the same as anyone else. Some camaraderie, some stories, some laughs. But many of these fighters had seen some awful things in their lives and were changed for it. She was no professional in mental health (and the counselor was off-ship for the week), but she had learned through literature, training with the soldiers, and luck both good and bad, and while those lessons had given her many useful tips, the truth was still that each case was unique. She could only do her best, and be prepared.

“Sergeant,” she said firmly, standing ramrod straight, her hands at her side and visible, amber eyes looking up into blue ones, voice level, firm without being forceful, “I am Doctor Cressida Vale. You will refer to me as Doctor or Commander. I will be conducting your medical examination today. These routine and non-invasive scans are performed on all personnel who come to serve on this ship, for your health and safety and that of the entire crew. At the end, we will have an opportunity to discuss any health concerns you may have, but that will be up to you. Do you understand?” She continued to hold his gaze as she waited for an answer.

For a moment, Jace wasn’t really looking at her. Not her face, not her eyes. His attention had snagged on the two uniformed figures nearby, both wearing the same uniform he was. They had seemed to appear from nowhere, and it had made him tense. But at least they weren't in his blind spot. He hadn't been here long enough to know all the faces with the shift patterns. Eventually, he'd know their names.

When he finally processed the doctor's words, his gaze shifted to her. There had been a command buried beneath the civility. It was not loud, but clear.

"Yes, Doctor," he said, the words delivered in the same flat tone he used for orders. Routine. Controlled.

He did understand.

She was shorter than him, but she didn't seem small. Her amber eyes held his, and he saw the steel there. Not physical threat, not overt, but danger came in different forms. Intelligence sharp enough to cut. The kind of mind that could dissect without needing a laser scalpel.

As he looked away, his eyes caught on a small flash of metal , a ring on her left hand. Engagement, and the ring told him of Earth customs for announcing intent to marry. He didn't linger on it. Just registered it like any other detail, like range, like movement. A subtle cue of something stable. Anchored. Something he didn't have.

His gaze shifted to the biobed. He didn’t move yet. His stance, his face, remained still.

He would be fine.

He just had to stay still.

“Good,” she said. For anyone else, she would smile, but the evidence before her suggested that that was a dumb move. At least for now. “Follow me this way to biobed two.” She gestured to the second one from the door “I would prefer that you take a seat but it is not a requirement.”

This was the hard part. Turning your back. But this was also a trust exercise. Whatever his view of the world around him, Cressida knew that Jace Morven was still a Sergeant in the Federation armed forces. Someone with a hair trigger for immediate violence usually doesn’t get to keep their position. Usually. And she figured he would probably be more comfortable to not turn his back to anyone.

So she walked around the patient and guided him to biobed two, retrieving her standard issue medical tricorder from the side console as she did so. A silent message of I will not harm you, and I trust you will do the same.

When she turned her back, just for a moment, he didn't move. Didn't even breathe for five full beats.

It had been a display of trust. He could recognise that, because she hadn't needed to. She could have waited for him to get to the biobed, which would have put him in the position of turning his back to her. There might have been a moment of hesitance, yes, but it might have been deliberate. The kind of choice that took effort. It lasted barely a second, but he'd seen it…the calculation, the decision. And something twisted in his gut at the knowing of it. Not fear, not quite. But something fear-adjacent. A quiet recoil at the space between her confidence and what he knew his file said.

He was a weapon. A blunt object with a reputation for sudden strikes.

A small voice in the back of his mind, a lot quieter these days, but still there when he least expected it, told him he should do something. Say something. Reassure her. Smile. Ease the air. Soften the space between them.

He should…

He should…

He couldn't.

He didn’t know how.

But he could act on her preference. She had said she'd prefer if he sat on the biobed. He walked over and sat.

The surface had that familiar give; just enough to register, never enough to matter. Slight resistance. Slight yield. Like a thousand other biobeds. Jace shifted to centre his balance, not because it was uncomfortable, but because it was neither. These things never were. He didn't expect comfort. Hadn't, not in a long time. Not since he was too young to know what it was to expect anything. His counselor once said that was the mindset of an animal…not expecting warmth, or food, or safety. Just existing in whatever was.

The remark had been off-hand. It had lingered.

His eyes tracked Doctor Vale as she reached for something that he recognised as a medical tricorder, familiar in shape and function. His jaw tightened. Shoulders drew in, just slightly. Not enough to notice unless you were looking for it.

But he sat still. Obedient.

Like a good animal, came the bitter thought.

He pushed it down. Let his eyes unfocus. Found a spot in the air to stare through instead of at.

“I’m going to start scanning now,” Cressida said, standing in front of him, her eyes now trained on her tricorder screen as her right hand passed the sensor over him. For a few seconds, the only sound in sickbay was the sound of the handheld scanner. “I’ve read your medical file, but is there anything not in it that I should know? More recent symptoms, injuries, or concerns?” This was more akin to a normal medical exam now. Less tense, for her at least. Doing her job to the best of her ability.

He let her scan him. Or rather, he sat impassively as she did, still and quiet, letting the work happen. Her question lingered in the air between them and something turned in his stomach. He knew what wasn't in the file. Sergeant Tho's initiation fights in the 77th, back when the tensions with Cardassia were escalating. The injuries he'd patched himself or let squadmates handle, field-style, half-drunk on adrenaline. None of that ever made it his medical file. Just bruises that healed and pain he forgot. Mostly. He considered the rest of her question. He had no answer. Nothing, really. He was about to say so when…

The doors slid open. A voice. Male, too loud for the space, cut through his thoughts.

Jace didn't process the words. He was already moving. Quick, reactive. Instinct took over. He stood, fast, body tensed, one arm rising…not quite striking, not quite blocking. Just ready to shove her clear if needed. To protect. To respond.
Then something stopped him.

She hadn't earned that reaction. She'd been direct. Controlled. Careful with his space. Respectful, but firm.

That was rare.

This one, something deep inside noted, might be worth listening to. Worth shielding, even if she doesn't need it.

The cold set in his expression cracked. For a heartbeat, he looked confused…almost young. His hand trembled, then eased, fingers uncurling from a fist into an open palm. Still not relaxed, not really. But not a threat anymore.

He didn't speak. Didn't move again. Frozen in the moment as he knew what he’d just shown her.

The reflex. The lack of leash. The animal edge he kept buried under uniform and discipline. He’d crossed a line again. Too fast. Too much. Too wired to defend, even when there wasn't a clear enemy. A blunt instrument. A thing built for violence trying to live in a place of stillness.

The doctor let out an unconsciously held breath as the nurse led the intruder — an engineer who had burned his hand on an EPS relay — to her office in the far side of sickbay to wait his turn to be seen. She had watched Jace’s reaction and felt herself tense. Would she need to act, either in self defense or to protect the engineer? But no. He controlled himself, and in his eyes she had seen something change ever so slightly. And the taut wire had become just relaxed enough for a more normal human interaction.

“Sorry about that,” she said, giving him a lopsided smile. “We rescheduled all routine appointments so our new troopers could have their medical exams in private, but emergencies can’t be controlled, can they?”

She set the tricorder and scanner down and looked him back in the eyes. “You’re in overall excellent health, Sergeant, but do you mind if I ask a few questions? They’re about some things I noticed in the scans that might be bothering you, but might not be. We don’t want to do anything if what I’ve seen isn’t causing discomfort.”

The words hit him softly, almost oddly so, with adrenaline still threading through his system. Jace lowered his arm, then sat back down on the biobed, rubbing his scarred hands together in a slow, awkward motion. He shifted forward, elbows on knees, body curled slightly in on itself. It was a familiar stance...the one he used to calm himself. The motion of rubbing his knuckles, his fingers, self-soothing, though he wouldn’t have called it that.

It was more movement than he usually showed in front of an officer.

Did he mind her asking? No. He minded answering...but that was different.

He didn't speak right away. His eyes fixed somewhere just past her, a neutral spot in the air, as he waited for the pounding in his chest to ease. It wasn't the intrution that had set his heart racing. It was holding himself back. The heat in his muscles, the weight of choosing restraint. Violence came easier. Still. But he'd made the other choice. He'd stopped.

Would Vel have been proud? No. Vel would have expected it. Expected better.

His voice, when it came, was quiet. Resigned. Like every counselling session he'd ever endured.

"What do you want to ask?"

“I noticed quite a few scars,” Cressida observed. “And also I see you’ve had a lot of broken bones over your life. Most have healed properly and are of no concern, but one in your left foot didn’t. Is it causing you any problem? We can repair the damage, as well as clear any of the scars if you want.”

Jace shifted, sitting up straight as his eyes briefly dropped to his left foot. He knew it, knew the dull ache that lingered in the cold, the throb that had grown familiar over years of neglected care. The cold days when his boots froze with mud, the sharp, sickening pain that flared up when he stood too long on parade…it was all a part of him, something he had never thought to change. He'd lived with it for as long as he could remember.

His eyes flickered back to her, a swift assessment. She hadn't hurt him yet, and he doubted she would unless he gave her reason. He swallowed, a reflex he couldn't quite suppress, then nodded. "Fine. If it's causing trouble, I'll take the fix for the foot," he said, his voice flat, as controlled as he could make it. He shifted slightly, the tension in his shoulders not quite fading. The scars… that was different. Over the years, they had become part of him, part of the armour he wore against the world. His stillness, his silence, the way he kept people at arm's length…all of it was wrapped up in those marks. He wasn't about to let anyone erase that.

"But the scars stay. Don't touch those," he added, voice hardening just a bit, as though to make it clear this wasn't a negotiation. "They're mine. I don't need them erased."

He felt a flicker of discomfort at the vulnerability of it all, the choice she was giving him. But he stayed still, didn't let the moment crack his composure. "Fix my foot. Not my past."

“I understand,” Cressida replied. “More than you might think.” She smiled and winked at him. “We’ll schedule something for after I’m finished examining all the new troopers, probably four or five days from now. My department will schedule something. It won’t be invasive, but it will take longer than either of us have right now.”

She stepped back, stood up straight, and nodded to him. “Sergeant, your medical examination is complete and I certify you as fit for duty aboard USS Guinevere. You are instructed to come to sickbay for all health issues, however minor you may consider them. Is that understood?”

Jace watched her carefully, absorbing the words. This was going to happen. Physically, he was fine. The order, all health issues. he'd have to judge that on a case-by-case basis. Trust was something that had to be earned, and he wasn't sure she had it yet. But he understood.

He gave a small nod and stood, slowly, silently. "Yes, Doctor," he replied. It took him a beat too long to realize the words had come out more freely than he intended. He wasn't used to speaking this much. His throat felt raw from the effort, like he hadn't spoken properly in days.

He stayed still, waiting for her to dismiss him, but met her eyes in the quiet space between them. For a brief moment, something flickered...an unspoken understanding. Scars mattered.

“Excellent,” said Cressida. “I trust that you’ll follow orders and report to me as needed.” And she did. For all the tension in the room, she felt that there was a mutual respect in place now. Would he report every inconvenient ache? Probably not, but the specific way she phrased her order wasn’t to detract from when people knew their bodies and understood normal discomfort from exercise or poor sleep; it was to prevent troopers from being too proud to disclose real symptoms of potentially large problems.

He would come to her if he had a problem. She trusted it.

“You’re dismissed, Sergeant.”

Jace gave the faintest nod at her dismissal. It was not curt, not sharp, just...accepting. There was no salute, no extra word, no unnecessary motion. Just that one nod, precise and quiet. He stepped back once, a small shift in posture marking the end of the interaction. Not casual, but not tense either. Something had eased. Not much. But enough. He glanced at her again, met her eyes briefly, and held her gaze just long enough for it to mean something. Not gratitude. Not comfort. But acknowledgement. The kind you give someone who didn't make things worse.

Then he turned and walked out. Still silent, still steady. Still with that cold detachment. But it wasn't not the same as when he walked in. It was as if some sort of decision had been made and even Jace wasn't sure what it was.

The door having closed behind him, Cressida’s shoulders slumped just a bit. This one had been a good one. A hard man who lived a hard life, but one she knew she would be able to rely on. He respected her, and was worthy of her respect himself.

She looked to the troopers standing guard. “I need to treat Engineer Poor-Timing real quick,” she said, gesturing back toward her office. “When the next one comes in, please tell them I’ll be just a moment.”

And the day, tense as it was, continued.

**

Commander Cressida Vale, MD
Chief Medical Officer, USS Guinevere

&

Sergeant Jace Morven
Platoon Sergeant
USS Guinevere

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