Control & Contact

Posted on Tue Jul 8th, 2025 @ 6:09pm by Lieutenant JG Elen Rell & Sergeant Jace Morven
Edited on on Wed Jul 23rd, 2025 @ 5:41pm

2,699 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: USS Guinevere
Timeline: 2389 - evening of 'Cuts and scrapes'

The gym wasn’t empty, but it felt that way.

Late shift. Lights dimmed just enough to take the edge off the bulkheads. Machines at rest. Mats rolled. The kind of hush that settled when nobody was trying to impress anyone. Even the mirrors seemed dulled. Not like he had truly looked or noticed.

Jace moved with practised rhythm, fists landing against the bag with dull, precise force. Nothing fancy. Nothing loud. Just repetition. Weight. Contact. Motion that didn’t ask for anything in return.

Here, he didn’t have to measure himself. No tight corners. No fragile words to step around. Just gravity, motion, and his own pulse. Sweat tracked slowly between his shoulder blades, soaked the collar of his tee shirt. His hair clung damply to his brow. Too long. He’d cut it soon...another small maintenance task on a body he kept like kit: functional, controlled, never ornamental.

The ache was steady, grounding. And yet, something frayed the edge of that focus. Not a sound. A feeling. He blinked.

He didn’t need to glance toward the door to know who it was.

He felt her. Or heard her.

Not like a warning. Not like danger. More like pressure stabilising in the room. A shift in atmosphere. As if some internal alert system had pinged…motion detected, not hostile.

Elen Rell.

Flicker-bright and out of phase with this hour. Not wrong. Just...not meant for shadows. Not in a bad way. Just...more colour than this place was used to holding. She was movement in corners his mind usually cleared for solitude. Her presence didn’t land like a question. It arrived like a suggestion.

He didn’t pause. Not right away.

One more strike. Then another. Slower this time. The rhythm broke not from unease, but because he’d started listening. Not to her voice…she hadn’t spoken. But to that shift. That ripple in his stillness. Like a river around a rock. Persistent. Soft. Unthreatening. She never tried to move the boulder. She just…moved around it. And stayed.

Jace dropped his hands at last, drawing in a breath that wasn’t quite tired. His right arm twinged faintly, a low ache from where R’Valla’s claw had caught him. The skin pulled against the wrap beneath his sleeve. The Kelpien nurse, Mieta, had used the dermal regenerator. Surface was fine, what was under was…tender. She hadn’t lied when she said that. He should compensate more with his other side.

He didn’t. He adjusted to the pain instead. Quietly. Like always.

He exhaled slowly through his nose. Reset his stance. Control reasserted itself with familiar discipline: shoulders square, weight balanced. Neutral.

Then he looked.

She was already walking toward him, probably mid-sentence…her voice carrying that barely-restrained energy that always arrived a half-step ahead of her. The gym lights cast shadows across her face, picked out the gold flecks in her braid loop and the slightly scuffed knees of her uniform trousers. Not regulation-dirty, just...someone who used her body to do the job. She probably hadn’t meant to come here looking like anything. But she’d still shown up, crochet cuffs and all.

She always did.

And even though he didn’t smile, something in the set of his shoulders gave. Just slightly. Like tension easing from a loaded spring. Not gone. Just...acknowledged.

He didn’t speak. Just watched her. Let her fill the space in her own way.

If she asked, he’d answer.

“…You always pick the bag closest to the wall,” her voice carried across the gym. Light. Familiar. A little breathless…like her thoughts had outrun her feet again and she’d only just caught up. That edge of momentum he recognised now.

He didn’t respond. Just waited. Watching her like a system coming online…no alarms, just status lights flickering green.

She grinned, lopsided and sure, like the joke was mostly for her. “It’s always that one. Even if the others are empty. I checked. Not that I ever notice you in here with others. Not yet, anyway. Maybe one day, huh? I’ll walk in and there’ll be some kind of motivational montage happening. You and the rest of the punching bag club, mid-training sequence.”

He didn’t answer, but he did shift…just a step back from the bag, not defensive, not wary. Just making room.

His pulse was still elevated, his breath even but heavy. Sweat marked the lines of his spine under his shirt, soaked into the wraps around his hands. He opened and closed them slowly, flexing the ache out of the joints. Letting the excess energy drain off like residual current. A methodical reset. He didn't need to shake it off. Just file it.

Her steps approached. Not on the mat. Not toward him. Just...into the range. Enough to be felt. Enough to count.

She didn’t touch anything. Just let her eyes wander across the space. Engineer’s eyes. Pattern-seeking. The scuffed lines on the floor. The tension in his stance. The faint, uneven smear of sweat from where his shoulder had clipped the bag. Her mind was probably marking those details without trying…he’d seen it before. She noticed things. The things no one else did. The shape of silence. The meaning of proximity.

“I almost brought you a towel,” she said, like it had just occurred to her that the thought might be relevant now that she was here. “But I thought that might be weird. You probably have a system. Or three. Maybe even got a few hidden in the ceiling.”

His eyes tracked her, steady. Still no reply. But not absent.

Not ignoring her.

Just listening.

Because she didn’t fill space the way others did. Her presence didn’t jar. Didn’t push. She scattered words like light against a dull surface...bright, unpredictable, but never invasive. The gym held it. And so did he.

The silence stretched, not heavy, not sharp. Just...breathable.

And he let it hold.

“You don’t mind, right?” she asked, only now getting around to the question, as if her thoughts had taken the long route through ten other ideas first. “Me just dropping by. I didn’t ask the computer this time, sort of just…walked until I found you. Maybe it’s been one of those days during my shift, you know?”

Jace didn’t respond right away. He let the silence stretch just long enough to test if the words had weight or were just orbiting. Then: “It’s fine.” A pause. Not awkward. Calculated. “You’re not loud.”

She lit up at that. Not literally, but close enough. Grin blooming like he’d handed her a medal. “You should hear me in a Jeffries tube. I narrate everything. Drives the junior engineers up the wall. Most likely why they just leave me alone now. Apparently, I echo. And leave sample squares around. Got to work on my tension, I’ve started knitting too tightly again…”

She dropped to the floor like a stone in gravity, inelegant, unbothered. Limbs folding into a cross-legged sprawl that didn’t seem planned so much as allowed. Like she trusted the floor to catch her. Like she trusted him not to flinch.

He watched her settle. Still on his feet, one hand loose at his side, the other curled loosely in the edge of the towel. He tracked her motion the same way he tracked perimeter shadows....automatically. But there was no tension in it. No bracing. Her movement wasn’t a threat. Not even a disruption.

Just a shape he was getting used to seeing.

She was looking at him now. Not sharp. Not searching. Just...cataloguing. Engineer again. Picking up wear patterns. Muscle shifts. The set of his shoulders. Maybe she was counting his breaths: he wouldn’t put it past her. But it wasn’t invasive. It was just...her way. Just her.

“Heard about your...sickbay visit,” she said, and her tone softened, cadence slowing like her thoughts were finally catching up to her mouth. “Well, no, I heard that the dark-haired FGF Sergeant walked to sickbay with blood leaking between his fingers. Got me worried. Got me thinking. Got me here.”

He watched her fingers. Her voice was steady now, but her hands gave her away; her index finger circling over her knee, tracing invisible circuitry into her trousers. Once. Twice. Three times. Exhale.

The feedback loop settling.

“Training. Claw slip. Happens,” he said, voice level. Like stating a maintenance report. Then he stepped away from the bag, retrieved the towel with practised economy, and wiped the sweat from his face, then neck.

The towel rasped softly. The most sound he’d made since she entered.

He looked at her. Not long, not hard. Just enough. “Just left a line. Pulls a little. Not bad.” Nothing else. No assurance. No invitation.

But the fact that he said it at all, spoke it aloud instead of letting her guess, meant more than he would ever admit.

And she’d heard it. He could tell.

Then, her voice again. Softer now. Like a back-thought slipping through. “My mum always hated sharp edges.”

Jace didn’t move. But the pause he gave was attentive.

Elen shifted her gloves in her lap, thumbs tugging at the little bobbles from wear. Pulled one free, a tiny ball. “Not weapons. Not combat knives or serrated plating. She had a field kit the size of a starship kitchen drawer and could disassemble a disruptor with her eyes half-closed. But…” She hesitated, then shrugged. “Corners. Angles. The edges of things. She used to say nothing good ever came out of something too cleanly cut.”

Her voice stayed light, but there was something under it now. Something remembered. “She said straight lines looked too much like decisions made too fast. Wounds that didn’t have time to bleed out or be patched up before the next order came in.”

Jace didn’t interrupt. The silence that stretched wasn’t weighted. It held.

“She got hurt on a mission once, before the war, when I was...maybe ten?” Elen went on. “Not bad. Not claws. A bulkhead fragment, neat slice right through her forearm. Patched up in minutes. But for weeks after, she said her grip was never the same.” Her fingers flexed unconsciously as if echoing the story. “She hated that. Hated the way it made her hesitate. And she hated the way it reminded her to.”

She looked down at her gloves. Sighed once through her nose. “It’s stupid, I know.”

“It’s not,” Jace said.

Simple. Certain.

And enough to make her glance up.

He was still watching the floor. Not her. But the words had landed like something real.

She nodded slowly, then ran her thumb along the inside of her palm, grounding again. “Anyway,” she said, voice lifting, “I guess what I mean is...I get it. How a small thing can stick in your bones longer than it should. Even when it’s healed.”

He didn’t answer. Just let her words sit there. Acknowledged. Kept. Maybe not for this injury, but for others patched up. Others removed from his skin but remembered.

Elen exhaled, tipping her head back for a beat before she shifted again, a soft creak from the mat beneath her. Her head dropped forward. Curls fell into her face. She didn’t bother to push them back. When she looked at him, the smile was small. Honest. A little tilted like it had survived a dozen second guesses.

“I worried,” she admitted. “It’s...I just worried. Maybe it wasn’t the fact you were bleeding...I mean, everyone bleeds now and then. I do. Frequently. Engineering comes with singed eyebrows and micro-cuts like it’s a rite of passage. I’ve got a dermal regenerator stashed in a panel I’m technically not allowed to have. Just for the stupid ones.” Her hands twitched, the kind of motion that meant her thoughts were moving too fast for her to keep track.

She slowed. Paused.

Took a breath.

Like she was buffering her own data. Filtering. Wondering if this was safe to say.

“You walked alone,” she said at last. Quiet. Not an accusation. Not sad. Just...noticed.

Jace’s eyes lifted, meeting hers. There was a tightening between his brows. Not a frown. Not confusion. Just something...off-centre. Something that didn’t fit neatly into any of his usual internal compartments.

“It wasn’t serious,” he said.

It was the truth. But not the full shape of it.

She nodded, gaze drifting toward the punch bag again, her fingers curling lightly around the edge of her boot. “Does it help?”

He followed her line of sight, then glanced at his hand, still wrapped. Flexed it once.

Helped what?

He didn’t ask.

“It’s training,” he said eventually. “Keeps me sharp.”

“Yeah,” she replied, soft and warm. “It does that.”

She shifted again, tucking her feet under her and looping her hands around her ankles like she might float off otherwise. “Can I watch?” she asked, voice light but sincere. “Your...routine. I’ll be quiet.”

He didn’t answer straight away.

Just stood there, hands loose at his sides, body still ticking with the rhythm of exertion. The pulse behind his sternum still steady, still strong, but slowing now. Returning to baseline. He studied her, not unkindly. Just…precisely. The way he did with people, places, risks. Not because she was a threat - she wasn’t - but because everything in him was built to weigh the angle of a moment before stepping into it.

She wasn’t looking at him directly now. Her gaze stayed soft, somewhere near his boots, one hand absently pressing her ankle like she was keeping herself anchored.

No pressure. No joke to soften the ask.

Just stillness.

He exhaled through his nose. Small. Controlled.

Then gave a nod.

It wasn’t a dramatic motion. Nothing performative. But it was permission. And it meant something.

He stepped back to the mat, adjusted his stance. His right arm flexed once. Still sore, the cut pulling slightly along the inside of his bicep where R’Valla’s claw had opened him, but the movement didn’t catch. The pain was background now. Registered. Filed. Managed.

Like everything else.

He began again.

Slow at first. Testing the movement, testing the weight. Each motion was deliberate. Not for show. Just the old, clean habits. Force distributed through core and legs, balance locked in. His fists hit the bag with the kind of measured impact that said: this is not rage, this is maintenance. This was how he kept the lines clean inside his own head. This was how he took pressure and turned it into order.

The gym around him faded again. Not completely. Just far enough to give him room to move.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t need to.

But he knew she was still there...curled, quiet, watching without commentary. A flicker of warmth settled low in his chest, unfamiliar and not entirely welcome, but not rejected either. It didn’t interfere. Just...existed.

Present.

He shifted into a set of core-driven strikes, body weight behind them, not fast, not careless. Efficient. Controlled. Every motion chosen. No slack in the system.

And somehow, her presence didn’t unsettle that.

She hadn’t tried to fill it. Hadn’t cluttered the silence with worry or softness too fragile to hold. She just... stayed. Like she understood it wasn’t about the bag. Or the exercise. Or even the pain.

It was about the rhythm. The control. The return to something he could feel in his bones.

So he kept going. Let her stay.

And in that quiet moment, between the beat of muscle and breath, he realised…

He didn’t mind being seen.

Not by her.

Not in this moment.

----

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

&

Lt. jg Elen Rell
Acting Chief Engineer
USS Guinevere

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