Home But Not Home
Posted on Wed Aug 26th, 2026 @ 3:07pm by Captain Thorrin & Commander Marisa Sandoval & Major Hastios Eilfaren
Edited on on Wed Aug 26th, 2026 @ 3:15pm
2,417 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
In The Nick Of Time
Location: Ready Room - Deck 1 - USS Herodotus
Timeline: MD010 1600 hrs
Thorrin sat in his Ready Room as he pondered both issues that plagued him at the moment. There was the fact that the ship failed to enter Maren's universe, and then there was Maren herself, and what to do with her. On his screen was the dossier on Commodore Tyler Malbrooke. The more Thorrin read the more he was convinced that he held the key to one of the problems. However, there was more to discuss. "Commander Sandoval, and Major Eilfaren please respond to the Ready Room. Bring Ms Malbrooke with you, if you please."
Hastios tapped his commbadge.
“Eilfaren here. Understood, Captain. We’ll be there shortly.”
He lowered his hand and looked to Maren.
“Thorrin wants to discuss what happens next,” he said. “Whatever he has in mind, you’ll have your say.”
A faint warmth touched his expression.
“Come on. We shouldn’t keep him waiting.”
Maren had been leaning against the bulkhead with her arms folded, one boot braced behind her, as if the corridor belonged to her and she had merely allowed the Herodotus to build itself around her. At Hastios’s words, she let her head fall back against the wall and stared at the ceiling for a second.
Of course Thorrin wanted to talk about what happened next. They had tried the impossible, failed at it, and now she had become an administrative problem with a pulse.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, dragging the words out as she pushed away from the bulkhead. “Can’t wait.”
She rolled her eyes, but her hand found the edge of her mother’s coat and held there while she straightened it. Whatever Thorrin had decided, she doubted the universe had suddenly started taking requests from her.
“Nothing says ‘your life is going brilliantly’ like being summoned to a room so three adults can discuss where to put you.”
Maren stepped past Hastios and started down the corridor before he could offer anything sensible.
“Come on, Muscles. Let’s go hear about my exciting range of options.”
Hastios watched her straighten the coat.
The gesture had become familiar. A small piece of armour borrowed from someone she had lost, pulled into place whenever the universe threatened to make another decision on her behalf. The sarcasm was familiar too. Sharper when she was worried, brightest when she wanted everyone to believe she was not.
He understood the instinct better than she probably realised.
“Whatever they’ve decided,” he said as he rose, “they will say it to you. Not around you.”
There was no promise that she would like what waited in the ready room. Hastios had lived too long to offer comfort made from guesses. But she would not sit there while officers discussed her as though she were another anomaly to be catalogued and assigned.
He followed her across the bridge and settled into step beside her. Not escorting. Not guarding. Simply there.
The Herodotus carried on around them, indifferent to the private weight of the summons. Deck plating hummed beneath his boots. Somewhere beyond the bulkheads, turbolifts moved between decks and consoles continued feeding the bridge information that would not solve this particular problem.
Home, but not home.
He suspected Maren already knew the difference better than most.
At the ready room, Hastios waited for the doors to part and entered alongside her. His attention passed once over the room before settling on Thorrin.
“Captain,” he said, measured and formal. “You asked to see us.”
"Yes. Help yourself to some of this wonderful Chateau Picard and have a seat. Once Marisa arrives we can get this proverbial show on the road." Thorrin raised his glass in toast and took a sip. The wine was truly excellent and not his usual fare. But, it worked to calm the nerves a bit, the news he had was not good and would not bode well for Maren.
Marisa was reviewing the data from their failed attempt to return Maren to her home. It was more out of a need to become more familiar with the process and its vagaries than anything else. Her inner Vulcan scientist was often curious. When she received the captain's summons, she sent the data to her personal computer for further study and tapped her combadge. "On my way." Then she stood, nodding to the next senior officer to take her place, and headed for the ready room.
When the door opened to admit her, she paused to take in the three occupants and their general attitude. They lingered on Hastios for a moment, the expression in her eyes softening, then she nodded and took a seat.
"Yes there we are all here. Maren I am not going to pull punches here. I have failed you, we have failed you. To make matters worse we do not know why we failed. Suffice to say for reasons beyond our control we cannot enter your universe." Thorrin paused to sip his wine. "As I see it there is only one thing we can do. That would be to transport you to your father in this universe. Commodore Tyler Malbrooke aboard the USS Pioneer. He can work with you and keep you safe until such time as we can get you home."
Maren gave Hastios a sideways look as they crossed the bridge.
“They’ll say it to me, not around me,” she repeated under her breath. “Very reassuring. You realize that still leaves loads of room for it to be terrible, right?”
She went through the ready room doors beside him anyway.
The offer of wine earned Thorrin an immediate roll of her eyes. Maren looked at the bottle, then at him, then deliberately dropped herself into the nearest chair without touching it.
“I’m seventeen,” she reminded him. “And I’m not drinking wine with three grown adults who can’t even get me back to my own universe. That feels like the beginning of a really depressing cautionary tale.”
Marisa’s arrival distracted her for all of about two seconds. The look towards Hastios was small, but Maren caught the warmth attached to it almost before she properly registered the expression itself. Her eyes moved from Marisa to Hastios and back again.
“Oh, gross.”
She settled deeper into the chair before either of them could decide that deserved an explanation, attention shifting back to Thorrin as he began.
The jokes thinned out as he spoke. By the time he reached the part about not being able to enter her universe, Maren was staring at the edge of the desk instead of him. She already knew they had failed. She had been standing on the bridge when the stars never came back. Hearing it made official somehow managed to make it worse.
Then Thorrin called Tyler Malbrooke her father.
Her head came up immediately.
“He’s not my dad.”
There was no sarcasm in that one.
“I have a dad. He’s back there.” Maren pointed vaguely towards nowhere, because apparently that was where home lived now. “This Tyler has his face and his name and probably does the same annoying thing with engineering manuals, but he isn’t him.”
She shifted in the chair, fingers finding the worn edge of her mother’s coat before she tucked her hand beneath her opposite arm.
“And before we decide my only option is getting handed over to alternate-universe Dad...” Her expression changed slightly, the clever little spark returning as an idea presented itself. “My shuttle’s still here, right?”
Maren looked between them. “You could fix it.” A beat. “Not completely. Just enough. Patch the hull, sort the engines, maybe give me something built this century for navigation. I already got through once with half the systems screaming at me, so technically I’ve got experience.” Even she seemed to hear how thin that argument was becoming, but she pressed on regardless. “I’ll be careful.” Another beat. “Really careful.” Her eyebrows lifted with an innocence nobody in the room had any reason whatsoever to trust. “I’ll be good. Promise.”
"It is not that simple," Marisa said quietly. "This is a matter of temporal science and quantum physics, not of good behavior and desire. We are not punishing you by keeping you from your home. We cannot get to your home."
"I tend to agree with the Commander here. It is not that simple. For one you could die in the attempt to return to your universe, you could also make it. I am sure that Sivek would tell us the odds. For the other you do not belong here, without the correct medications you will die. Now, all of that said. While you are with the Pioneer we will work the problem and when we learn what is going on here we will send you home if that is what you truly want." Thorrin was careful when he spoke. Careful to not come across as a parent, or someone trying to exert authority over her. He wanted this to serve as warning. "We will repair your shuttle regardless. When you are returned to your universe so too will be your vessel, and in working condition."
Maren’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the medication. “Right,” she said. “So that’s the trap.” She gestured vaguely between Thorrin and Marisa. “Keep taking the magic don’t-die injections or I fall apart, which means I can’t steal my shuttle and make an incredibly sensible escape attempt.” Her mouth twisted. “Pharmaceutical imprisonment. Very clever.” But there wasn’t much fight behind it anymore.
Maren sank a little further into the chair, staring down at the worn leather gathered around her wrist. They had tried. That was the part she couldn’t really argue with. They had taken the Herodotus into temporal space, pointed an entire bloody starship at her universe and still couldn’t get through.
Her shuttle wasn’t going to magically do better because she was stubborn enough. “Fine.” The word came out sour. “Fine. I get it.” She looked up again, plainly unhappy about having reached that conclusion. “I can’t go home. Not now.” There was a small pause before she added, more petulantly, “Which is completely shit, by the way.” Her eyes moved between them. “So I stay here, take the stupid injections, and go live on the Pioneer with alternate-universe Tyler until you lot figure out why reality’s being difficult.” She folded her arms again. “But nobody turns my shuttle into some shiny Starfleet museum piece while I’m gone.”
"You have my word about your shuttle. It will remain in the shuttle bay. The only thing done to it will be repairs. It seems to be Starfleet issue, so repairing it will not be a problem." Thorirn began and then all at once an idea struck him. "Maren, to the best of your knowledge. Does the Dominion of your universe have temporal technology?"
Maren’s expression tightened as she thought about it. “Not that I know of. I mean, they’ve got enough horrible things without adding time travel to the list.”
She started to shake her head, then stopped.
“There was something Dad talked about once. Not with me, really. I was supposed to be doing something else and definitely wasn’t listening.” Her brow furrowed. “Janus... Gate? Engine? Something like that.”
She looked towards Thorrin. “He said people were looking for it. Dominion, resistance, probably everyone with more ambition than sense. Some kind of device that could open... I don’t know, holes? Between places that weren’t supposed to touch?”
Her nose wrinkled.
“I was fifteen. There were explosions. I didn’t exactly take notes.”
Thorrin thought about the information Maren had given, and the theory that led to the question for several moments without speaking. At last, the faintest smile touched his lips. “Ah. I see. So, my hypothesis can be true.” His eyes narrowed—not with surprise, but with satisfaction. “Thank you Ms Malbrooke for that most informative anecdote.” He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. “The interesting question, of course, is not whether my theory is correct.” A pause. "The Janus Core? Up until now that was a myth, a figment of the DTI imagination. Something that the Dominion had allegedly created to poke holes between universes. No proof of its existence has ever been found. Suppose the Dominion of Maren's universe has created this device and used it. Who knows what the repercussions would be. If this theory is true then you know what else must therefore be true?" Another pause. The smile disappeared. “And that, I fear, is considerably less encouraging.”
That this Janus Core may also exist in this universe, Marisa thought to herself. Or there's a passage to it. Neither idea sat well with her.
Maren looked from Thorrin to Marisa, catching the sudden change in the room even if she had absolutely no idea what conclusion they had both reached. Apparently one half-remembered conversation from years ago had just become significantly more important than she’d intended.
“Right,” she said, sinking back into the chair. “So I mention one thing Dad talked about when I was fifteen and now we’re doing the terrifying silence thing.”
Her eyes narrowed at Thorrin, unimpressed by the return of his ominous Captain routine.
“You can keep the nightmare bit to yourself for five minutes. I’ve already got enough of those.”
She folded her arms and stared at the ceiling for a moment, thoroughly done with temporal mechanics, alternate universes and mysterious devices with stupid names.
“Janus Core,” she muttered. “Brilliant. Add that to the list of things currently ruining my life.”
"Or saving it, depending on how you look at the situation," Marisa replied quietly yet kindly. "Sometimes, Time has a way of putting us where we need to be." It was true for her as it brought her here--she deliberately did not look at Hastios as she thought this. Hopefully, it would end up working out for Maren as well.
A Joint Post By
Maren Malbrooke
Civilian
Captain Thorrin
Commanding Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
Commander Marisa Sandoval
Executive Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
RSS Feed