The Long Crawl: Part IV
Posted on 13 Jan 2026 @ 6:09pm by Lieutenant Commander Elias Harlan
2,219 words; about a 11 minute read
USS Interpid
En-Route to Lathira IV
Two days had passed since the personnel transfer, and the Intrepid’s corridors felt narrower than usual.
Elias had turned avoidance into an art form. He’d mapped out the ship’s quieter arteries like a man charting escape routes: the lower-deck Jefferies tubes where the lighting was dim and the hum of secondary power systems drowned out footsteps, the auxiliary sensor labs that rarely saw senior staff, the small observation alcove on Deck 12 with a viewport nobody ever used because it faced the warp nacelles instead of stars. He knew every shift change, every patrol pattern, every time the mess hall emptied enough to grab coffee without running into blue uniforms.
Jorik, true to form, hadn’t chased. Vulcans didn’t chase. They waited, patient as tectonic plates, certain that logic and probability would eventually force the collision.
Elias told himself he was fine with that. The ship was big enough. Only a few days left until Lathira IV. He could keep moving, keep busy, keep his head down. He’d already spent hours in main engineering—quietly helping Kira Voss with a stubborn EPS relay that had been giving her grief since the last refit. She’d given him a sidelong look when he showed up unannounced the second day in a row, but she hadn’t asked questions. Engineers understood when someone needed a wrench in their hands and silence in their ears.
He’d even taken to eating in his quarters, replicator meals wolfed down while staring at Arawyn schematics on a PADD. The coffee was still decent, the back pain was manageable, and as long as he timed his movements right, he didn’t have to see the one person on this ship who knew exactly how to unravel him with a single raised eyebrow.
But the Intrepid was old. Reliable, yes, but old. Systems creaked, access panels needed constant attention, and the crew—despite Harrington’s easy command style—still had routines that overlapped in predictable ways.
Elias had been in the lower engineering bay, elbow-deep in a coolant manifold that had developed a micro-leak nobody else had noticed yet, when the turbolift chime echoed down the corridor.
He froze for half a second, wiping plasma residue from his hands on a rag, ears straining.
Footsteps—measured, deliberate, no wasted energy.
Vulcan.
Elias exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled. The manifold could wait. He wiped his hands again, tossed the rag onto the tool cart, and started toward the nearest Jefferies tube access hatch.
Too late. The footsteps stopped just outside the bay entrance.
“Lieutenant Commander Harlan.”
That voice—calm, precise, carrying the faint undertone of something Elias had once mistaken for warmth.
He turned, shoulders squaring like he was bracing for a hull breach.
Jorik stood in the doorway, hands clasped behind his back, blue medical tunic immaculate. His dark eyes met Elias’s without flinching, without surprise, as if this moment had been inevitable since the moment the transfer orders cleared.
Elias felt the old coil of tension settle in his gut, familiar and unwelcome.
“Doctor,” Elias said, voice flat as duranium plating. “Didn’t expect to see you down here. Engineering’s not exactly sickbay territory.”
Jorik inclined his head in that precise, infuriating way of his. “I was informed of a minor coolant irregularity in this section. As a medical officer, I am required to assess any potential environmental hazard to crew health.”
Elias’s mouth twitched—just a flicker, not quite a smile, more like the ghost of one that died years ago. “Right. Except you’re a guest on this ship. Not one of its medical officers. So do you want to try that again?”
Jorik pursed his lips, the barest tightening at the corners. “You are a guest as well.”
“And I’ve been given dispensation by the captain to help where I can,” Elias shot back, the words coming out a little too fast, a little too sharp. He cursed himself inwardly the second they left his mouth—damn it, that was emotion leaking through the cracks, the one thing he’d sworn to keep welded shut around this man.
Jorik’s dark eyes didn’t waver. “You have been avoiding me.”
There it is.
Elias felt the old tension snap tight across his shoulders like a faulty power coupling. He exhaled through his nose, slow, controlled. “Why is that a surprise? We haven’t talked in how long now?”
Jorik’s gaze narrowed by a fraction—barely perceptible to anyone who didn’t know him as intimately as Elias once had. “Twelve years, three months, fourteen days.”
“Well, there you go.” Elias turned back to the open access hatch, reaching for the panel like the conversation was already over.
Jorik didn’t move. His voice remained calm, measured, but there was something beneath it now—something that might have been steel if Vulcans allowed themselves such things. “Since that time, I have sent you twenty-five subspace messages. One for your—” he paused, arching an eyebrow with surgical precision, “birthday and our anniversary every year. I also sent a message informing you I would be posted to the Arawyn. You have replied to none of them.”
Elias froze mid-reach, fingers hovering over the hatch controls. The words landed like a feedback loop in the plasma manifold—sharp, unexpected, and impossible to ignore.
He straightened slowly, turning just enough to meet Jorik’s eyes. “Must have gotten lost in transit.”
The shrug was deliberate, casual, the kind he’d perfected over years of deflecting captains, admirals, and anyone else who wanted more from him than he was willing to give.
Jorik didn’t blink. “Subspace relays have a 99.87% delivery success rate on Federation-standard channels. The probability of twenty-five consecutive failures is statistically negligible.”
Elias let out a short, humorless huff. “Then maybe I just didn’t feel like reading them.”
The silence that followed was heavier than the coolant manifold’s pressure reading.
Jorik took one measured step forward—not aggressive, just closing the distance enough that Elias could feel the shift in the air between them.
“Twelve years is a long time to maintain silence, Elias.”
The use of his first name—quiet, precise, almost gentle—landed like a phaser on stun. Elias felt his jaw tighten.
“Oh, so it’s Elias now,” he fired back, voice laced with mockery sharp enough to cut conduit. “What happened to Lieutenant Commander Harlan? Too formal for old times’ sake?”
Jorik’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “I was—”
He stopped abruptly, closing his eyes for a brief, deliberate moment, the way he used to when he was counting to ten in Vulcan. Elias knew that look. Knew it too damn well.
“Still have trouble controlling those pesky emotions around me?” Elias pressed, leaning in just enough to make the jab land harder.
Jorik opened his eyes. The struggle was there—subtle, buried under layers of discipline, but Elias could read it in the faint tension at the corners of his mouth, the microscopic tightening of his jaw. The Vulcan remained silent for a beat longer than logic strictly required.
“Elias,” he said at last, voice carefully even, “I did not come here to engage in a verbal altercation.”
“You mean fight,” Elias corrected, crossing his arms and leaning back against the bulkhead, boots planted like he was bracing for hull stress. “I thought you liked it when we fought. What was it you said once? ‘Fascinating’?”
Jorik’s nostrils flared—just a hair, but Elias caught it. “I do not understand why humans are so—”
He cut himself off again, the almost-frown flickering across his face before he locked it down.
Elias didn’t let up. “What? Emotional? Gee, I wonder why, Jorik.” His voice dropped, low and edged with twelve years of banked heat. “Could it be because you roped this particular human into a bonding ceremony, spent four years studying me like some xenopsychology experiment, and then—once you’d collected enough data on interspecies relationships—filed for divorce like it was a quarterly report?”
He pushed off the bulkhead, closing the distance a step, eyes locked on Jorik’s. “How petty can you be? I left you alone. I went away. Far away. But apparently not far enough, because here we are again.”
The engineering bay felt smaller, the hum of the coolant manifold suddenly too loud in the silence that followed. Jorik stood perfectly still, but Elias could see the micro-tremor in his clasped hands—the one tell he’d never quite mastered when Elias pushed him to the edge. Jorik’s voice, when it came, was quieter than before, but there was steel beneath the calm.
“Your characterization of events is… inaccurate.”
Elias barked a short, bitter laugh. “Inaccurate. Right. That’s one way to put it.”
He turned away, dragging a hand through his hair, the ache in his back flaring like it always did when old wounds got poked.
Jorik’s composure cracked visibly now—the faint tremor in his clasped hands, the micro-second delay before his next breath, the way his eyes darkened as if a storm was gathering behind the calm. Elias knew that look; he’d seen it in the mirror during their marriage, when the logic couldn’t quite contain the surge underneath.
“Elias,” Jorik said, voice still even but with a razor edge that hadn’t been there a moment ago, “your characterization is not merely inaccurate. It is reductive and self-serving. The bonding was mutual. The dissolution was mutual. You consented, as did I. To frame it as an experiment from which I ‘collected data’ and then discarded you is… dishonest.”
Elias laughed—short, harsh, echoing off the bulkhead. “Dishonest? That’s rich coming from the man who treated me like I was a lab specimen. ‘Fascinating how the human responds to conflict.’ ‘Intriguing emotional volatility.’ You quoted me like a research paper, Jorik. And when the paper was written, the subject was no longer required.”
Jorik’s jaw tightened, the control slipping further. “You were never a specimen. You were my mate. The bond—”
“The bond you broke,” Elias cut in, stepping closer, voice rising despite himself. “You filed the dissolution papers while I was still in recovery after those Orion Pirates tried to destroy the Triton. I woke up in sickbay to a notification that my husband had decided our ‘philosophical differences’ were irreconcilable. No conversation. No warning. Just a clean, logical exit. Because that’s what Vulcans do—cut losses when the variables become too unpredictable.”
Jorik’s hands unclasped, fingers flexing once before he forced them still again. His voice dropped, but the strain was audible now, the suppression fraying at the edges. “I acted to preserve what dignity remained. You were reckless. You courted death repeatedly. I could not—would not—stand by and watch you destroy yourself for the sake of proving some point about human resilience. The bond made it… intolerable. I chose logic over prolonged suffering.”
Elias stared at him, the words hitting like a plasma torch. “Suffering? You think I didn’t suffer? Why do you think I was so reckless to begin with!? I loved you, Jorik. I loved you enough to try to meet you halfway—suppress what I felt, play by your rules. And when I couldn’t, when the human part wouldn’t stay buried, you decided I was the variable that needed to be eliminated.”
Jorik’s eyes flashed—genuine anger, raw and unguarded for the first time in years. “And you decided silence was preferable to communication. Twelve years of messages unanswered. You chose avoidance over resolution. If I am petty, what does that make you?”
The air between them crackled. Elias felt the old rage rise, hot and familiar, the same rage that had gotten him demoted more times than he could count.
“I chose survival,” he said, voice low and dangerous. “I chose to stop letting you hurt me. And if that means ignoring your birthday cards and anniversary reminders, then yeah—guilty. Better the silence than another round of ‘fascinating’ while you decide whether I’m worth keeping.”
Jorik took one step back—small, controlled, but a retreat all the same. His face smoothed over, the mask snapping back into place, but the damage was visible in the tightness around his eyes, the faint green flush at his temples.
“Very well,” he said, voice flat again, but colder now. “I see the parameters have not changed. Good day Lieutenant Commander.”
He turned on his heel, movements precise, almost mechanical. But Elias caught the slight hesitation in his step—the one that said the control was costing him more than he’d admit.
Elias watched him go, the door hissing shut behind him.
He stood there for a long moment, breathing hard, hands clenched at his sides.
Then he slammed his fist against the bulkhead—once, hard enough to sting—before turning back to the manifold like nothing had happened.
The coolant leak was still there. The ache in his chest was worse. He picked up the rag and got back to work.
Lieutenant Commander Elias Harlan
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Arawyn
&
Lieutenant Jorik
Medical Officer (NPC apb Jeff)
USS Arawyn
RSS Feed