Recursive Loops

Posted on Thu Mar 5th, 2026 @ 2:11am by Lieutenant JG Sheldon Parsons

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Deck 6
Timeline: Mission Day 2 at 1617

[Access Corridor 6-G]
[Deck 6]
[MD 2: 1617 Hours]

The end of his shift was technically forty-three minutes away. Sheldon had learned, in his relatively short tenure as acting chief engineer, that the end of his shift was more of a philosophical concept than an operational reality, though.

There was always one more junction to check, one more status report to pull, one more junior engineer looking at him with an expression that said What do we do next, sir? — and he had learned to answer that expression with something resembling confidence even when confidence was the last thing he actually had. Today's version of that was a walking tour of the ongoing repair efforts across decks five through seven, which had seemed like a good use of his pre-end-of-shift time when he'd planned it at 1400 and was beginning to feel considerably less efficient now that his feet hurt and the EPS junction on deck five had taken forty minutes instead of fifteen.

But the work was real and the people doing it deserved to see him, so he kept moving. He was thinking about Tamblem, though. This had been happening with some regularity since the moment they'd come back aboard from the Kordra-Lisrit — this involuntary rotation of his brain back toward the Trill like a compass finding north.

He remembered the feeling of Dravor's arms around him in the shuttle bay, solid and warm and smelling faintly of scorched duranium and sweat. And he remembered the way something in his chest had unknotted just enough to let himself breathe properly for the first time in two days while in those arms. And then Sheldon remembered the words that had come out of his own mouth almost before he'd decided to say them: Take me to dinner, Tamblem. A real one. Somewhere nice. Ask me properly.

He'd meant it. He still meant it. Tamblem had been so patient with him these past few days, circling gently, leaving openings, never pressing — and Sheldon kept meaning to say yes, let's go, tonight and then something would come up or he'd look down at his own hands and find them not quite steady enough for a date, not quite steady enough to be someone's dinner companion, not quite capable of sitting across from a person who looked at him the way Dravor looked at him without wondering what that person would find if he actually looked back clearly.

Tomorrow, maybe, he thought. When things were slightly more—

"Lieutenant."

Sheldon realized he'd almost walked past the open access panel entirely. Petty Officer Deenik was slouched inside the jefferies tube junction, which was not unusual; what was unusual was that he was not working. His tools were laid out neatly on the mat beside the access panel — the careful arrangement of someone who had set them down deliberately rather than dropped them in a hurry — and his hands were resting on his knees, and his face was tipped slightly down in a way that Sheldon recognized as the posture of someone who had been hoping very much not to be seen.

Deenik was Andorian. Young — twenty-two, maybe? Though everyone seemed young to Sheldon lately in a way that made him feel oddly elderly for someone in his twenties himself. Deenik's pale blue cheeks were marked with lighter streaks that caught the corridor lighting with a particular quality that Sheldon's brain identified before his conscious mind caught up.

He's been crying.

Sheldon stood in the corridor for a moment longer than was probably natural. His hand moved, automatically, toward the V of his collar — which was, as always when he was on duty, the stiff regulation fabric of his uniform rather than the soft red knit he would have given a great deal for right now. His fingers found nothing useful there and fell back to his side.

He could keep walking. There were two more junctions on his list and forty-one minutes left before his shift technically ended and a dozen things that needed his attention before he could reasonably call it a day. He could note this in his mental file of things to follow up on and send a gentle message later suggesting Deenik make an appointment with Counselor Qo and call that due diligence. But he was the acting chief. And people, much like EPS taps, sometimes needed flushing before they could be sealed properly. So he crouched down at the access panel instead.

"Hey," Sheldon said, quietly enough that it wouldn't carry. "How's the junction looking?"

Deenik's head came up. His antennae, which had been drooping in a way that Sheldon was not versed enough in Andorian physiology to fully interpret but understood instinctively as bad, swiveled slightly toward him. The young petty officer's jaw tightened with the particular effort of someone pulling themselves together in front of a superior officer.

"Fine, sir. Almost done with the diagnostic. I was just—" He stopped. His eyes, which were a pale, almost colorless grey, did a quick involuntary survey of the corridor, checking for other people, and Sheldon recognized the gesture because he'd made it himself approximately one thousand times over the years.

"It's just us," Sheldon said.

Something in Deenik's face shifted. The jaw stopped working quite so hard. His antennae dipped again.
"I just keep thinking about Lieutenant F'Rar," he said, and his voice was carefully level in the way that voices got when they were being held very still over something unstable. "I keep thinking she was trying to get to us and I keep thinking we were right there and we didn't—" He stopped. His hands, still resting on his knees, had curled very slightly inward.

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. Sheldon felt the weight of the unspoken ending crowding them like the walls of the jeffries tubes. He knew the end of that sentence, because he had been saying it to himself ever since the Adelphi. And he knew that finishing it out loud never actually did any damned good.

He sat down. Not crouching anymore — fully, actually sat down on the deck plates beside the open access panel, in the slightly too-warm corridor that smelled of EPS residue and metal, his back against the bulkhead. It was not the posture of an acting chief engineer on a walking tour of repair status. Sheldon was fairly sure a real chief engineer would know exactly what to say right now, would have some combination of Starfleet regulation and genuine human warmth that addressed both the work and the grief in one efficient gesture, and he was equally sure he was not that person. But Deenik was twenty-two years old and his cheeks had tear-stain streaks on them, and Sheldon was the one who had happened to walk by.

So he said the careful, gentle things. The things that were true even when they didn't feel true yet — that F'Rar had known the risks and had run toward them anyway, which was who she was. That being right there and not being able to stop it was not the same as being responsible for it. That grief this sharp this early was not a problem to be solved but a thing to be carried, and that carrying it got easier when you weren't trying to carry it all by yourself.

Sheldon said all the things Doctor Bracco had said to him across months of weekly sessions, and he meant all of it. He wanted to help Deenik. He was truly trying to help. But underneath the careful, gentle words, a very small but very chiding voice asked: Who are you to be saying any of this?

He pushed it down. Deenik needed him to be steady, so he was steady. By the time the young petty officer had composed himself enough to pick his tools back up, the color in his cheeks had evened out and his antennae had come back to something more upright, and he'd said Thank you, sir in a voice that Sheldon believed. That was something. That was real. Deenik was, for the moment at least, going to be alright.

So Sheldon climbed back to his feet, nodded once in the way he hoped communicated This is between us and you did nothing wrong, and then walked back out into the corridor. He stood there for a moment. The low, constant frequency of the impulse manifolds they'd been babying along for two days now humming around him, the corridor empty in both directions. He was alone for forty-five seconds in a way he almost never was anymore.

And that's when Sheldon thought about Tamblem again. He thought about how patient the Trill was being with him. About how Sheldon had asked for the date but was now dragging his heels. He thought about how afraid he was to sit across from Tamblem and be seen as too fragile, too unworthy of love. The recursive loops of his rumination cycled again and again with no letting up in sight.

Forty minutes were left in Sheldon's shift, give or take. Forty minutes to his comfy cardigan. A little dopamine squirted through Sheldon's brain at the thought of his cozy sweater waiting for him in his quarters. With a nod, he committed himself to forty more minutes and did the only thing he could.

He started walking again.


=/\= A post by... =/\=

Lieutenant JG Sheldon Parsons
Acting Chief Engineer
USS Sojourner