Timeline Glue and Other Grievances - Part II
Posted on Fri Jun 5th, 2026 @ 5:51am by Maren Malbrooke
Edited on on Fri Jun 5th, 2026 @ 5:52am
2,377 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
The Mysteries of Maren
Location: Major Eilfaren’s Office, USS Herodotus
Timeline: MD004 - 0955 hours
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.”
Maren’s head snapped up at one part of that, the rest of his careful, reasonable answer briefly shoved aside.
“Sedate me again?” she repeated, eyebrows lifting. “Wow. Love that we’re already planning the sequel.”
She sat back a little, but the tension had come back into her shoulders despite the sarcasm. The daily hypospray Addison had given her was still sitting in her pocket like a tiny reminder that her body was apparently now on a schedule, and she hated that too. Hated that some part of her had to admit it was helping. The room wasn’t slipping at the edges today. The hum of the ship wasn’t coming apart into voices. The present was staying put, which was great, obviously, except for the part where it meant Doctor Talbert’s weird little time drug was doing its job.
Her gaze flicked back to Hastios, catching the attempt at humour about cargo, and she narrowed her eyes at him like she had caught him committing a minor crime.
“Also, don’t think I missed that,” she said, pointing at him with one finger. “Major Muscles making jokes. Very dangerous development. Someone should log that before the ship’s emotional support furniture starts getting ideas.”
The deflection was obvious enough that even she probably knew it, but she kept going anyway because it was easier than sitting with the word again.
“And for the record,” she added, a little quieter but still stubborn, “if anyone comes at me with another hypo, they tell me first. Properly. Not while four people are holding me down and everyone’s acting like I’m about to chew through the deck plating.”
Hastios watched the tension come back into her shoulders at the word again, and for once he didn’t press the point. He could have explained the medical logic. He could have reminded her, again, that everyone had been trying to stop a bad situation becoming worse. None of that was what she needed to hear in that moment.
He gave a slow nod instead.
“Duly noted,” he said, plain and firm. “If a hypo is needed and there is time to tell you, you get told first. Properly. No crowding unless there’s an immediate risk, and no surprises unless there’s no other choice.”
His eyes stayed on hers, steady enough to make it clear he wasn’t humouring her just to move the conversation along.
“I’ll speak to Doctor Talbert and my team. We can’t promise every situation will be tidy, but we can do better than making you feel trapped before anyone explains why.”
Maren held his gaze for a second, testing whether he meant it.
Annoyingly, he seemed to.
That should have helped. It did, a little. Not enough to stop the next thing coming out of her mouth, but enough that when she spoke again, it was less like she was trying to win a fight and more like she had finally found the person unlucky enough to receive the full report.
“Good,” she said, then immediately pointed at him again. “Because now we need to talk about your doctor.”
The words came out with momentum behind them, like a hatch seal finally giving way.
“Doctor Talbert is terrifying,” she said, dead serious, then leaned forward in the chair as if this needed emphasis. “Not in a stabby Dominion way, before you get all official about it. In a really calm, really cheerful, ‘I’m going to say the most horrifying thing you’ve ever heard and then smile about coffee’ kind of way.”
Her eyes widened slightly as she warmed into the rant, one hand cutting through the air between them.
“She told me I was coming apart at the seams. Coming apart. At the seams. Like I’m an old jacket or a cheap blanket or some engine panel held together with hope and bad wiring. And then she just hands me a hypospray and says, oh, once a day, this’ll keep you in the timeline.”
Maren sat back just enough to throw both hands up.
“Do you understand how insane that sounds when you are the person being told it? I woke up the other day in another universe, got dragged into Sickbay twice, got stuck behind a forcefield, got told my cells are basically trying to quit reality, and then the doctor says it like she’s giving me vitamins.”
Her mouth pressed into a thin line, but the frustration under it had edges of something else now. Fear, mostly. The kind she didn’t want to name because naming it gave it furniture.
“And she kept touching me,” she added, quieter for half a second before the attitude snapped back around it. “I know she’s a doctor. I know that’s what doctors do. But she just does things and then explains them like two seconds later, which is useless, because by then I’m already trying not to crawl out of my own skin.”
She shifted in the chair, restless now, unable to sit completely still with the memory of Sickbay under her skin.
“And the way she talks,” Maren went on, wrinkling her nose. “It’s all soft and calm, but not in a normal way. In that ‘I am definitely not about to sedate you’ way, right before she absolutely sedates you. Her bedside manner sucks. Like, aggressively. Like it needs repair work.”
A beat passed.
“And then she offers me secret coffee like that makes up for telling me I need daily timeline glue to stop existing wrong.”
Maren stopped there, breathing a little harder than the rant probably deserved, then looked away first because the last part had come too close to the real bruise.
“I know she helped,” she muttered, the words grudging and sharp around the edges. “I’m not stupid. I know I needed help.”
Her jaw tightened, fingers picking at the sleeve near her wrist.
“I just hate the way everyone keeps saying things like they’re normal when they’re not.”
For once, Hastios didn’t answer straight away.
He sat there, looking at her across the desk, and the silence stretched just long enough to make it clear he was choosing his words carefully rather than preparing a lecture. He could hear the fear under the rant. It was loud, even dressed up in sarcasm and sharp little jabs.
“Doctor Talbert is not careless,” he said at last, his voice even. “And she isn’t cruel.”
There was no snap in the words, but there was a line there. Clear. Firm.
“She was trying to keep you here. In this timeline. Alive. That is her priority, and I trust her judgement. If she told you something that sounded terrifying, it’s probably because the truth itself is terrifying, not because she enjoyed saying it.” His gaze held hers, steady but not hard. “Addison may dress things in too much cheer for your liking, but she knows what she’s doing.”
He leaned back slightly, letting the chair creak beneath his weight.
“That said, I understand why it landed badly. Waking up in another universe and being told your body needs help staying anchored is not normal. None of this is normal. People acting calm around it doesn’t make it feel less insane from your side.”
A faint dryness touched his voice, just enough to ease the edge without undercutting her. “And for the record, ‘daily timeline glue’ is not the terminology I’d recommend putting in your medical file.”
Then he sobered again.
“But you need to hear this: Doctor Talbert is on your side. She may frustrate you. She may explain things two seconds later than you’d like. She may commit crimes against bedside manner before breakfast. But she is trying to save your life, Maren. So you can be angry about how it felt. You can ask for warning before she touches you. You can tell her when something scares you.”
His expression remained calm, but the words carried weight.
“What you can’t do is mistake her care for a threat. Not if you want this to get easier.”
Maren stared at him for a long second, clearly hating every part of his answer.
Mostly because it made sense.
Her mouth opened like she had something ready, then closed again when whatever she’d been about to say failed to survive contact with the point. That only made her look more annoyed. She shifted in the chair, jaw tight, eyes flicking away from him toward the wall like the architecture had suddenly become responsible for the conversation.
“Fine,” she muttered, in a tone that made it very clear nothing was fine and never had been. “Great. Amazing. Everyone’s competent and trying to save my life, and I’m supposed to be totally normal about the fact that my body tried to unsubscribe from the universe.”
She sat back rather than getting up, arms folding tightly across her chest as the huff settled in properly.
“I hate this ship,” she announced, with the full wounded authority of a seventeen-year-old who had run out of better arguments but refused to concede the war.
Then she pointed at him, because apparently the rant still had a little fuel left.
“And I still think timeline glue is better than whatever boring medical name she’s using.”
Hastios watched her for a moment, then seemed to reach a decision.
“Pancakes,” he said, as if that settled the matter.
He rose from behind the desk with the unhurried steadiness that made even standing up look like a tactical choice. The chair gave its usual faint complaint under him as he moved around the desk, but he ignored it and stopped near her, offering one broad hand.
“You argue less when there’s food in your mouth,” he added, dry as dust, though there was no bite in it. “So we’ll call that a working strategy.”
He waited for her to take his hand rather than reaching for her, letting it be her choice. “Come on. You can hate the ship after breakfast.”
Maren looked at his offered hand like it had personally insulted her intelligence.
Then she looked at him.
Then back at the hand.
“No,” she said flatly. “Absolutely not.”
She pushed herself up from the chair on her own, because apparently that mattered now, and stepped around him before he could turn standing up into some kind of emotionally supportive marine manoeuvre.
“I know what you’re doing,” she added, pointing at him as she moved. “You’re doing that adult thing where you make the problem smaller by putting food next to it. Like suddenly I’m not mad because breakfast exists.”
She was already heading for the door, still running on the leftover heat of the argument even if the worst of it had started to burn out.
“And for the record, I am still mad. Your ship is still insane. Sickbay is still creepy. Doctor Talbert still told me my body was trying to unsubscribe from the universe like that’s a normal Tuesday diagnosis. And timeline glue is still the superior medical term, no matter what anyone says.”
The doors opened before she reached them, which earned them a quick glare.
Maren paused just long enough to look back at Hastios, making sure he was following because, annoyingly, she did want him to.
“But fine,” she said, all huff and wounded dignity. “Pancakes.”
A beat.
“And if your hallway gargoyles are out there, tell them I’m emotionally stable enough for syrup but not conversation.”
Hastios watched her march toward the door with all the wounded dignity she could fit into one exit, his offered hand lowering without comment. For a second he just stood there, looking after her, and despite himself the corner of his mouth twitched.
This, somehow, was now his morning.
A displaced teenage girl had come to his office to argue about doors, guards, doctors, hyposprays, emotional architecture, and the naming conventions of temporal medicine, and he had apparently resolved it with pancakes. There were tactical briefings less complicated than this.
“Kids,” he muttered under his breath, not unkindly, the word carrying more weary amusement than complaint.
Then he followed her out, still faintly entertained despite every sensible part of him knowing he probably shouldn’t be.
Maren had already stepped into the corridor when she heard him.
She stopped just long enough to look back over her shoulder, eyes narrowing.
“First of all, I heard that.”
Her gaze held on him for a beat, all teenage offence and bruised pride.
“And second,” she added, already turning away again, “you’re lucky I’m hungry.”
With that, she headed down the corridor like the pancakes had been her idea all along.
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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