Nowhere Else to Go
Posted on Sun Mar 16th, 2025 @ 6:05pm by Crewman Mateo Gardel
Edited on Sun Mar 16th, 2025 @ 7:38pm
602 words; about a 3 minute read
Personal Log – Crewman Mateo Gardel
Medical Sciences Specialist, USS Fenrir
I was about five seconds away from giving up on ever getting those damned samples. Two days of chasing logistics, of supply chain nonsense, of data PADDs that all said the same thing—pending, in transit, expected to arrive shortly. The shortly part was a lie.
Then, finally, they showed up.
Not through the miracle of a functioning supply department, of course, but courtesy of some guy I’d never seen before, rolling a crate into my lab like he’d drawn the short straw for the day. Older, sharp around the edges, but not in the way the usual medical staff were. He had the kind of presence that made you think of combat, not Sickbay—which, turns out, wasn’t far off.
Nurse Leon Inaros. Former Marine medic. Now a Fleet nurse, though I get the impression that’s not a label he’s settled into just yet. He didn’t introduce himself with a rank. Just a name, just a role. Like there wasn’t anything worth knowing beyond that.
I would’ve written him off as just another face passing through, except—
Except he wasn’t.
We talked. At first, just about the samples, the logistical incompetence, the usual. But then—more. And I wasn’t expecting more.
He was in the Dominion War. Not just in it—he was my age when it ended.
I keep coming back to that. Twenty-four.
At twenty-four, he was in combat zones, digging into battlefields, carrying people out while praying a shuttle didn’t get shot out of the sky. At twenty-three, I’m—what? A medical science specialist hanging onto Starfleet by a thread, collecting viral samples and trying not to piss off the wrong people one too many times.
I don't feel invincible now. I sure as hell wouldn’t have felt it back then.
And then there was the way he talked about the war. Not with the weight of someone trying to glorify it or romanticize survival. He talked about it like it was something that just was, something that had taken pieces of him he’d never get back. He lost his leg in a training accident, but it was more than that. Something in him—some part of who he was—was still missing.
I think I understand that feeling more than I want to admit.
And when he said, “You’re not the only one with nowhere else to go,” I felt that in my goddamn bones.
Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? The Fenrir isn’t just a post for me. It’s the last one. No reassignment. No second chance after this. I screw this up, and that’s it. Dishonorable discharge, no future in the field I spent my life working toward.
Maybe that’s the difference between us. I’m still fighting to stay in, and Leon’s already lost what he thought he’d always have.
It’s strange—I don’t usually feel anything when people pass through my lab. They come, they go. But Leon—there was something familiar there. Something in the way he looked at me, like he actually saw me, like he recognized something I wasn’t sure I even wanted recognized.
I think we might run into each other again.
And I think I wouldn’t mind that.
End log.
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