Timeline Glue and Other Grievances - Part I
Posted on Thu Jun 4th, 2026 @ 1:48pm by Maren Malbrooke
Edited on on Fri Jun 5th, 2026 @ 11:05am
2,271 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
The Mysteries of Maren
Location: Outside Major Eilfaren’s Office, USS Herodotus
Timeline: MD004 - 0947 hours
Maren had been outside Major Eilfaren’s office for nearly three minutes, which was stupid, because she was not nervous.
She was pacing because standing still made her look like she was waiting to be invited in, and she absolutely was not doing that. Waiting politely outside the door of the giant marine who had assigned her hallway gargoyles felt too close to admitting he had authority over her morning, and she was not emotionally prepared to give him that kind of win before breakfast.
So she paced.
Three steps one way, turn, three steps back. The corridor was quiet enough that the rhythm of her boots against the deck started to sound judgemental after a while. Very Starfleet. Even the floor had opinions.
After everything that had happened the day before, she had decided to be calm. Sensible, even. She had slept, taken the tiny little dose of please continue existing that Doctor Talbert had handed her like that was a normal thing to keep in a pocket, and had not tried to barricade herself anywhere. Excellent progress, frankly. Medal-worthy.
The problem was that calm did not mean she had no complaints.
There was Sickbay, for a start. The forcefield. The being carried in like luggage with emotional damage. The fact that someone had hit her in the face, which everyone seemed very keen to explain away as unfortunate circumstances instead of what it felt like, which was rude. Then there were the guards outside her quarters, the replicator with its deeply personal vendetta against caffeine, and the general ship-wide policy of treating her like she might explode if left alone near a chair.
Maren stopped in front of the door and folded her arms.
Then unfolded them immediately, because that looked like sulking.
She was not sulking.
She was filing a complaint with her face.
The door chime glowed beside the frame, innocent and smug and probably connected to seventeen layers of security that would announce her presence in the most dramatic way possible.
Maren narrowed her eyes at it.
“Right,” she muttered. “If you tell him I’m emotionally compromised before I even get through the door, I’m pulling you out of the wall.”
Hastios felt her before the chime.
Not clearly. Not with words. Just the shape of a presence outside his office, restless enough that he assumed she was pacing. Given Maren, it was not a difficult conclusion to reach.
He sat behind his desk for a moment, eyes resting on the report in front of him without reading another word of it. There were certain kinds of trouble that announced themselves with alarms, weapons fire, or collapsing temporal geometry. Then there was Maren Malbrooke outside his door, which somehow managed to feel like its own category.
He drew in a slow breath through his nose, set the PADD down, and stood.
By the time he crossed the room, he had already braced himself for the complaint. Possibly several complaints. Likely one about the guards. Probably another about breakfast. There was a fair chance the replicator had committed some new crime against her dignity.
The door opened just as she leaned toward the chime, mid-threat.
Hastios looked down at her, then at the chime, then back to her face.
“Threatening ship hardware now?” he asked, voice dry but not unkind. “That’s an ambitious start to the morning.”
Maren froze with one finger still hovering near the chime.
For half a second she just looked up at him, caught in the deeply unfair position of being witnessed before she had arranged her face into something less guilty.
Then her eyes narrowed.
“I was negotiating with it,” she said, lowering her hand with as much dignity as she could rescue from the wreckage. “There’s a difference.”
She glanced past him into the office, then back at his face, already deciding she was going in whether he formally invited her or not. “Also, your door is rude. It opened before I pressed anything, which feels like entrapment.”
Maren stepped around him with the confidence of someone who had absolutely not spent three minutes pacing in the corridor, then stopped just inside and turned to face him properly. She had made an effort this morning, or at least enough of one to look less like she had wrestled a medical team and lost. Her hair was tied back loosely, her clothes were clean, and there was only the faintest shadow left along her jaw where the bruising had been treated but not entirely forgotten.
“So,” she said, folding her arms and then, after a beat, deciding to leave them folded this time. “I have some complaints.”
Hastios watched her step around him like she had every right to occupy the room, and in fairness, he had expected nothing less. The corner of his mouth moved faintly as he let the door close behind her.
“I assumed you might,” he said, dry but not dismissive.
He walked back around his desk at an easy pace, giving her the room to plant herself wherever she pleased. There was no rush in him, no irritation, only that steady patience that somehow made him seem even larger in the space. He did not sit immediately, instead resting one hand on the back of his chair as he looked at her properly, taking in the clean clothes, the tied-back hair, the fading bruise she was pretending not to care about.
“Before you begin,” he added, voice calm, “if one of the complaints is about the door, I’ll note that it opened because I told it to. So you can leave ship architecture off the charge sheet for now.”
Only then did he sit, the chair creaking faintly beneath him as he settled behind the desk. He folded his hands loosely in front of him and gave her his full attention.
“Go on then, Maren,” he said, with the faintest glint of humour in his eyes. “Let’s hear the damage.”
Maren didn’t wait to be offered a chair.
She chose one on the wrong side of where a guest was probably supposed to sit, dragged it half an inch with her boot, and dropped into it like she was claiming territory rather than accepting hospitality. The fact that she was in his office, on his ship, under his security protocols, did not appear to have made the smallest dent in her belief that she had arrived with a valid case and several supporting exhibits.
“Fine,” she said, leaning forward with both elbows on her knees. “Let’s start with the part where your people came into my quarters like I was about to assassinate the furniture.”
Her eyes narrowed at him, the irritation warming up now that she had an actual audience.
“I locked the door. Big scary crime, apparently. Then they forced it open, which, by the way, really helps sell the whole ‘you’re not a prisoner’ thing. Very comforting. Ten out of ten. Would absolutely panic again.”
She pointed toward her jaw, where the last faint trace of the bruise still ghosted under her skin despite Sickbay’s best efforts.
“And then one of them hit me.” Her voice sharpened there, losing a little of the performative sass beneath something more genuine. “I know everyone’s got reasons. I know I was freaking out. I know I probably scared them. Great. Add it to the list. But he still hit me.”
For a moment the room went quieter around her, or maybe she just felt it that way.
Maren looked away first, jaw tightening as if she hated that the words had landed anywhere real.
“So yeah,” she muttered, folding her arms again and settling back into the chair with brittle defiance. “That’s complaint number one.”
Hastios let her finish without cutting in. When she pointed to the fading bruise on her jaw, his expression didn’t shift much, but his eyes stayed on it for a moment longer than they had to. He wasn’t going to pretend it hadn’t happened, and he wasn’t going to bury it under procedure just because procedure made things tidier.
“You’re right,” he said plainly. “He hit you. That happened, and you’re allowed to be angry about it.”
He leaned back a little, giving her the space of a straight answer rather than a defensive one. “But I need you to understand the rest of it too. Your anger didn’t stay with you. It spilled into the room. Into him. He wasn’t just reacting to what he saw; he was reacting while being hit with what you were feeling.” His tone stayed even, not accusing, not excusing. “That doesn’t make it harmless. It also doesn’t make what happened simple.”
A faint crease settled between his brows. “I’ll review it. Properly. If he lost control beyond what the situation forced on him, I’ll deal with it. But I’m not going to stand here and tell you it was the same as someone calmly deciding to punch a frightened girl in the face.”
There was a beat, then the faintest touch of dryness returned. “Which, I suspect, is the version of the complaint you were hoping to file.”
He folded his hands loosely on the desk, still watching her with that steady, difficult calm.
“So complaint number one is heard. You were hurt. That matters. But your abilities affected the people in that room, and that matters too. We need to account for both if we’re going to stop it happening again.”
Maren’s expression tightened at the mention of her abilities spilling into the room, but she looked away before he could see too much of it land.
“Yeah, well,” she said, far too quickly. “I didn’t exactly send out invitations.”
Her fingers picked at the edge of her sleeve, a small movement that betrayed more than her face did. She knew what he meant. She hated that she knew what he meant. The room, the fear, the way everyone’s emotions had started feeding back into hers until the whole thing turned into one ugly, screaming mess. It was easier to shove that somewhere else for now.
“And I said I get there were circumstances,” she added, lifting her chin again like that settled the matter. “So great. Review it. Do whatever very official marine thing happens when someone has a bad day and my face gets involved.”
She sat forward again, visibly grateful for the next complaint because it gave her somewhere else to put the feeling.
“Complaint number two,” she said, raising one finger. “Being carried into Sickbay like angry cargo.”
Her eyes narrowed at him, and the attitude sharpened again, though there was something underneath it that still hadn’t fully settled.
“I had four officers on me, restraints on my wrists, a forcefield over the biobed, and everyone kept talking at me like I was some kind of containment problem with hair.” She gave him a pointed look. “Which, fine, I get it. Apparently I was very exciting yesterday. But maybe next time we skip the part where it feels exactly like every nightmare I’ve ever had, yeah?”
She leaned back slightly, folding her arms again as if that could keep the rest of it from showing too much.
“And the sedative,” she added, almost as an afterthought, though her tone made it clear it was not one. “No one warns you how weird it is when your brain is still panicking and your body suddenly decides it’s on holiday. That was horrible.”
Hastios’ expression softened a little, not with pity, but with understanding. He had heard plenty of soldiers joke their way around things that had frightened them. Maren did it with more teeth, that was all.
“No,” he said quietly. “That part sounds awful.”
He let that sit for a moment, because dressing it up would not help either of them.
“Being carried, restrained, sedated, watched through a forcefield… I can see why that would land badly. Especially for you.” His voice stayed even, but there was less of the marine in it now and more of the man who had carried people out of worse places than Sickbay. “I’m not going to tell you it was comfortable because it was necessary. Necessary things can still be ugly.”
He leaned back slightly, studying her without making her feel pinned by it. “What I can do is make sure we handle it better from here. If medical needs to sedate you again, you get told first unless there is no time. If security has to be in the room, they stay where you can see them. No crowding unless there’s an immediate risk.”
A faint trace of dryness returned, just enough to take the sting out of the air. “And if anyone refers to you as cargo, angry or otherwise, I’ll consider that a failure of imagination.”
Then his tone settled back into something steadier. “You’re allowed to hate how it happened. I’d be more worried if you didn’t. But the way forward is making sure the next hard moment doesn’t feel like the last one.”
A Joint Post By:
Maren Malbrooke
Civilian, USS Pioneer
Major Hastios Eilfaren
Chief Security & Tactical Officer
Second Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
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