The Quiet After
Posted on Fri Mar 27th, 2026 @ 9:35am by Maren Malbrooke
Edited on on Fri Mar 27th, 2026 @ 5:52pm
2,564 words; about a 13 minute read
Mission:
The Mysteries of Maren
Location: VIP Quarters - Deck 2 - USS Herodotus
Timeline: MD002, 1438 hrs, Prime Timeline
Sleep had taken her hard and without much grace.
One minute Maren had been curled around a pillow with her face wet and her mother’s voice still echoing in the room, and the next she was surfacing from it slowly, disoriented by the strange softness beneath her and the quiet hum of starship life beyond the walls. For a few seconds she didn’t move. She just lay there, staring blearily at the ceiling with that heavy, drained feeling that came after crying too much and meaning none of it to happen.
Then memory caught up.
The log. The voice. The grief that had torn out of her and rolled through the ship like a warning siren made of heartbreak.
Her eyes shut again briefly.
“Great,” she muttered to herself, the word rough with sleep and embarrassment.
The room was still, though not silent. The ship carried on around her in that distant, muffled way starships did, full of lives and motion held just beyond the bulkheads. She could feel it if she let herself pay attention, the emotional texture of the Herodotus pressing faintly at the edges of her senses, but after the collapse earlier she kept the contact shallow on instinct. Even dulled down, there was enough there to remind her that people had probably felt what happened. Or at least something of it.
That thought alone was enough to make her drag an arm over her face with a quiet groan.
Her mother’s coat was still half beneath her where it had twisted during sleep, the old leather warm now from hours spent tangled under her side. She reached for it immediately, fingers brushing over the worn sleeve before pulling it closer, more grounding herself than actually needing it. The PADD sat where she had left it on the bed beside her, dark now, harmless-looking in a way that felt vaguely insulting.
A few hours ago she had been in another universe, bleeding on the deck of a wrecked shuttle and ready to knife the first person who came through the hatch.
Now she was in borrowed quarters on an intact Starfleet ship, puffy-eyed, emotionally exposed, and trying not to think too hard about the fact that somewhere on board were people who might have felt every bit of what had come out of her.
The door chime sounded.
Maren froze.
Not because she thought she was in danger. Not exactly. But because she knew, with the awful certainty of someone who had lived too long with consequences, that this was probably about her.
She pushed herself upright slowly, one hand still resting on the coat in her lap, and stared toward the door with immediate suspicion settling back into place.
“Come in,” she called, her voice still a little hoarse.
The door slid open with a soft hiss, and a woman Maren hadn’t seen before stepped inside.
She looked to be somewhere in her forties, Human, with dark auburn hair pinned back in a way that suggested she had done it quickly and moved on. She wore blue, but not with the same polished edge as the senior staff Maren had already met. There was something more practical about her, more lived-in. In one hand she carried a mug, and in the other a second.
She stopped just inside the room, taking in the bed, the coat in Maren’s lap, the PADD beside her.
“Lieutenant Commander Elara Naveen,” she said. “One of the ship’s counsellors.”
She lifted one of the mugs slightly.
“I brought tea. Just tea,” she added, like she already knew suspicion was coming.
She didn’t come any closer yet, just stayed where she was and gave Maren room to breathe.
“I’m not here to push,” she said after a moment, her voice calm and even. “I just thought you might not want to sit with all of this on your own straight after waking up.”
Her eyes flicked briefly toward the PADD, then back to Maren.
“If you want me to leave, I will. If you want the tea and nothing else, that’s fine too.”
Maren’s expression tightened almost immediately.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, the edge coming back fast now, more reflex than intent.
She pushed herself up a little straighter on the bed, one hand going instinctively to her face as if she could smooth away the evidence of the last few hours by sheer will. Her hair was a mess, her eyes probably still looked tired and swollen, and she hated that enough on its own without someone else quietly clocking it too.
“I’m fine,” she added, with the particular tone teenagers used when they very obviously were not. “Just tired.”
Her gaze dropped briefly to the second mug, then back to the counsellor. The tea had been noticed the moment the woman walked in, even if she didn’t want to admit that either.
After a moment, and with far more caution than the situation probably needed, Maren shifted forward and reached for it. She took the mug carefully, like accepting it didn’t mean she’d agreed to anything else.
“Thanks,” she muttered, quieter now, her fingers settling around the warmth of it while she kept the coat close with the other hand.
Elara nodded once, as if that answer was about what she’d expected. She didn’t challenge it. Her eyes dropped briefly to the PADD on the bed, then lifted again to Maren.
“A few hours ago,” she said quietly, “something hit this part of the ship hard enough that people stopped what they were doing.” Her tone stayed even, matter-of-fact rather than dramatic. “The captain told me he gave you access to some logs. About your mother.”
She let that rest there for a second before continuing.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said. “But if that’s what this is, you don’t have to sit in here on your own pretending you’re fine either.”
That flows better from Maren’s defensiveness, because it acknowledges the act she’s putting on without sounding pushy.
Maren was quiet for a few seconds after that, both hands wrapped around the mug now as if the warmth of it gave her something to do. Her eyes stayed on the tea rather than the counsellor, watching the faint curl of steam rise from the surface.
“It was weird,” she said at last, her voice lower now, the earlier defensiveness worn thin rather than gone. “Seeing her.”
Her fingers tightened slightly around the mug.
“I don’t… really remember her properly,” she admitted. “Not like properly properly. Just bits. Stuff my dad said. Things he kept. Things I think maybe came from her, or maybe I just decided they did.”
She swallowed once.
“But hearing her talk like that…” Her brow tightened faintly. “She just sounded normal.”
That was the part she still couldn’t quite get past. Not some huge speech. Not anything dramatic. Just her mother sounding like a person with a life. Parents. Work. Stupid little things to complain about.
Maren looked up then, but only for a second.
“I know that wasn’t really her,” she said quietly. “I know that.”
Her gaze dropped again almost straight away.
“But she looked like her. She sounded like her. It was close enough that my brain kind of stopped caring about the difference.”
A small, embarrassed huff escaped her, though there wasn’t anything amused in it.
“I just… didn’t think it was going to do that.”
Elara sat with that for a moment, her hands curled around the mug as she watched Maren over the soft curl of steam.
“Yeah,” she said quietly, and there was real warmth in it. “I can understand that.”
Her eyes flicked briefly to the PADD on the bed, then back again.
“Sometimes it isn’t the big things that get you. It’s hearing someone laugh, or complain about something stupid, or sound exactly like themselves in a way your heart recognises before the rest of you can catch up.” The corner of her mouth softened. “That’s usually the part that hurts the most.”
She shifted slightly in her chair, still careful not to crowd the room.
“And if you’ve been carrying her around in bits and pieces for years,” she added gently, “then hearing something that made her feel real again… of course that was going to matter.”
Her tone stayed soft, but there was something steady underneath it, something grounding.
“I’m glad you played it,” she said. “Even if it wrecked you a little.”
That got a laugh out of her.
Small and embarrassed, but real.
Maren ducked her head slightly, one hand tightening around the mug while the other came up to rub at the side of her face as if she could hide behind the motion for a second. “Yeah,” she admitted, a little colour creeping into her cheeks again. “Just a bit.”
The irony of it wasn’t lost on her. She’d spent half the day trying not to let anyone on this ship see her crack, only to end up sending half a deck a psychic broadcast of her grief because she’d listened to one log.
Her eyes drifted toward the coat still lying close by, and her expression softened without her really meaning it to. “I’ve got this,” she said, nodding toward it. “The jacket. It was hers. At least… my dad always said it was. I’ve had it forever.”
She stared at it for a second longer before looking back down into her tea.
“He always talked about her like she was…” She gave a small shrug, searching for the right word and landing on the most honest one. “Everything. Like she was amazing and beautiful and brilliant and basically impossible to live up to.” Another little huff of laughter escaped her, this one thinner. “So I guess in my head she turned into this massive thing.”
Her fingers curled a little tighter around the mug.
“And then hearing her just talk like a normal person,” she said more quietly, “it kind of messed me up. In a good way. In a horrible way. Both.”
Elara’s expression softened as she listened, and this time when she smiled it was a little more obvious, though still gentle.
“That sounds very much like something a father would do,” she said quietly. “Especially one who loved her and missed her.”
Her gaze followed Maren’s briefly toward the jacket, then returned to her again.
“And honestly,” she added, warmth still in her voice, “it makes sense that she turned into something bigger than life in your head. If all you’ve had are stories and one old jacket, your mind’s going to fill in the rest.”
She took another small sip of tea and let the silence breathe for a second before continuing.
“There’s something strangely cruel about finally getting a piece of someone back and finding out they were just… a person,” she said, not with bitterness, just understanding. “Not lesser. Just real.”
Her shoulders lifted in the slightest shrug.
“I think both can be true,” she said. “It can be good and horrible at the same time.”
Maren gave a small, half-hearted shrug, her eyes dropping back to the tea in her hands.
“Yeah,” she said after a moment, though it came out more like something to fill the space than real agreement. “Maybe.”
Her thumb moved absently over the side of the mug while the room settled into a quieter kind of silence. She didn’t seem to have the energy to argue with Elara, but she wasn’t ready to unpack the thought any further either.
Elara seemed to read the mood for what it was. She didn’t push past the quiet, didn’t try to draw anything more out of her. She just set her own mug down, rose from the chair with the same unhurried calm she had brought into the room, and gave Maren a small nod.
“I’ll leave you to it,” she said gently. “Get some more rest if you can. I’ll check in later, but not too soon.”
There was enough warmth in it to make it clear she meant that.
Maren only nodded, still curled slightly around the mug in her hands. “Okay.”
The door slid shut behind Elara with a soft hiss, and the quarters fell quiet again.
This time the silence felt different.
Not as sharp as before. Not quite as empty. It settled around her more gently now, helped along by the warmth of the tea and the lingering sense that, for once, someone had come in, seen the mess of her, and not immediately tried to pull it apart or fix it.
Maren glanced down at the old leather coat still half beneath her on the bed, its worn sleeve twisted near her hip, and then to the PADD resting beside it. Between them sat two versions of her mother. One real only because her father had kept her that way through stories, old things, and stubborn hope. The other preserved in logs and records and a life that had never belonged to the woman Maren had lost, yet somehow still carried enough of her to hurt.
Her father had always spoken about Tarelle like she had lit every room she’d ever stepped into. Like she had been too smart, too kind, too good for the universe that had taken her. Maren had grown up with that version of her so long that somewhere along the way her mother had stopped feeling like a person and started feeling like something impossible. A standard. A ghost. A promise that maybe one day, when things were safer, when the war eased, when the Dominion wasn’t watching every corner of their lives, she might somehow be found again.
Now she knew that even in a universe where the war had gone differently, where Betazed had survived and Starfleet had endured, Tarelle Von had still been taken from the people who loved her.
Just differently.
Maren let that sit for a while, staring into the tea until her reflection blurred in the surface.
The thought that stayed with her wasn’t really about grief this time. It was smaller than that. Stranger.
Her mother had been real.
Not perfect. Not just beautiful in the way her father had talked about her. Not some brilliant, glowing thing who only existed in memories and old leather and the shape of an ache. She had laughed. Complained. Missed home. Worried about answering her parents’ messages. Existed in all the ordinary ways that made a person feel touchable.
Maren hadn’t realised how much she’d needed that.
She set the mug down carefully, then reached for the PADD again, slower this time, like she wasn’t reopening a wound so much as returning to something she still wasn’t ready for but didn’t want to leave alone.
Whatever happened next, whatever choice she made about staying or going back, she knew one thing now.
She wasn’t done listening.
A Post By:
Maren Malbrooke
Civilian, USS Pioneer
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