Lo Que Cargamos: Part IV - Stars

Posted on Fri Jan 2nd, 2026 @ 6:20pm by 1st Lieutenant Ángel Martinez

1,555 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Character Backstories
Location: USS Pathfinder, Various
Timeline: 2388/2375

Warning: Contains hints of sexual abuse in characters' past, language warning

2375: Starbase 371

The bar was quieter now. The noise and chaos of Starfleet personnel on shoreleave had bled out, leaving low murmurs and the occasional clink of glasses from those who remained either out of stubbornness or just a need for something grounding. Most of the squad had filtered away earlier, tired or drunk or pretending not to be either. Martinez had ducked out earlier, while the others were still distracting themselves with noise. The tattoo shop had been quieter than expected. A back room, clean enough, the kind of place that didn’t ask questions. Just ink and silence.

Now, the bandage wrapped their upper arm, pulsing gently with heat and ache. It felt right. The pain didn’t settle anything, but it marked something. A line drawn. They had refused the dermal regenerator, despite the huff of annoyance from the tattoo artist. Had also opted for the needle rather than the fancier technology.

They had needed to feel it under their skin.

Martinez stepped back into the bar and saw him. Still in the same seat. Jace Morven, looking like a blade someone had forgotten to sheath, and yet…laid down. Shoulders tense, eyes too sharp for this dim light. He hadn’t touched his drink. They didn’t know why he had ordered it. They had only ever seen the man drink water or mint tea, with a touch of sugar.

They moved toward him without hesitation. Slid into the seat beside him, quiet, not needing an invite. They didn’t crowd. Just settled into the space the way only someone who knew Jace could. Like weather easing into pressure. “You gonna drink that,” they murmured, nudging the glass with a knuckle and a raised brow, “or just glare it to death?”

No reply. Just a flick of those ice-blue eyes. But there was a flush to his skin now, high on the cheekbones. Sweat dried just at his hairline. Hair not quite in place. His shirt was the same, but his posture was…looser. Not relaxed. Jace never relaxed. But something in him had changed. Something Martinez noticed instantly and recognised. That post-release hum on his skin, in the pinpoint dark in his eyes.

They didn’t say anything at first. Just let it sit between them. “I got the tattoo finished,” they said after a moment, voice low. “Shaded in the edges.”

Jace gave a small nod. No surprise. He’d known it was coming. Had seen the sketches Martinez had made, in sand, on a PADD, in a fogged up window.

“He would’ve liked it,” Martinez continued in a quiet voice, thoughtful, grief learning to stay subvocal. “Always wanted stars down his arm. Didn’t get the chance. Joined instead, and then... well. Now I got it for him.” They didn’t explain further. Didn’t have to. Diego. Their little brother. Still vivid in their mind as he had been at sixteen, mouthing off with a grin too wide, bootlaces always coming undone.

The ache stayed behind their ribs, but tonight, it didn’t bleed into their voice. They glanced sideways at Jace again. He was still staring at the drink, but his jaw wasn’t locked anymore. Not quite. Something had shifted. Martinez leaned in, just enough for their voice to be shared. “You went somewhere.”

That earned a wary glance. The kind Jace gave when expecting danger. It made Martinez’s chest tighten.

“I mean,” they clarified, softer now, “you disappeared. Came back looking...less razor wire, more like a person.” They watched Jace carefully. There it was. A slight tension, an unspoken bristle. And underneath it, a new weight in his eyes. Not bad. Not shame. Just…held. Martinez tilted their head, smile barely there. “So. You fuck it out of your system? Or just needed to be seen?”

They didn’t expect an answer. But he gave one anyway, voice low and deliberate. “Does it change anything?”

Martinez paused. Considered it, because it was a question and they wanted to give Jace what they got in return: truth. Then they shrugged. “Only if you think it does.”

Another stretch of silence, just a small one. Like the air settling in an airlock. “It was quiet,” Jace said. “Not violent.”

Martinez blinked. Then turned more fully toward him. It shouldn’t have surprised them, but it did. Not the act itself. But that it had startled Jace, that gentleness could be so foreign to him. “That surprised you?” they asked, more careful now.

There was silence. Not a shift, not truly, but those blue eyes watched with a brief flicker of vulnerability that was almost beautiful. “Yeah.”

Martinez breathed out slowly. Not pity. Not sorrow. But a kind of ache. Not for Jace’s body, which was always iron-tight and moving, but for everything he carried behind that. For the quiet devastation of someone who only knew softness and intimacy as something to brace for, who expected it to be followed with pain and humiliation. They leaned in, voice even and sure. “We all need something soft now and then. Doesn’t mean it breaks us. Means we’re still alive. Still people. Not animals.”

Jace didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. He was still sitting beside them. Still breathing. Still here. Eventually, Martinez stood. “You staying?” they asked, voice softened with the accent slipping through as they watched him.

There was a moment where Martinez saw the decision being made, and the hesitation of the word coming out. “Yeah.”

They didn’t make a gesture of farewell. Just laid a hand on Jace’s shoulder, pressing down for a brief second. Not a touch of comfort, but of presence and touch to remind. I still see you as you.

Then they walked away, letting the noise of the bar take them back into the corridors. The pulse of the new tattoo thrummed in time with their footsteps. Behind them, they knew Jace would sit a little longer, steadying himself in the only way he knew how. They didn’t look back.

They didn’t need to.

2389: USS Pathfinder, Martinez’s Quarters, 19:02

The jacket came off in one fluid motion, shoulders rolling as if the weight clung even after it was shrugged free. Martinez tossed it gently over the back of the chair and moved to the mirror, fingers already reaching for the bottom of on their undershirt. The fabric lifted, the band of the undershirt was pulled up, bunched over the shoulder, exposing their upper arm to the mirror. They stood there a moment, quiet. Breathing.

The tattoo had aged well. Dark lines, faded in places, but still strong. A cluster of stars, scattered along the outer arm and drawn in a deliberate arc. Not quite a constellation, not something a chart would name. Just shapes their brother had once traced on a sketchpad when he was still a boy, when the war was something other people talked about. They had added to it over the years. A line here. A shadow there. And then, after the war ended, they stopped. Not because they had run out of space, but because there was nothing more to say.

Except for the scar.

It cut through two of the stars, pale against the ink. A field injury. Shrapnel. Something sharp that tore into them during an evac on Voran III. A dermal regenerator had been offered, but they had refused the final pass. Chose to keep the line jagged. Let it stay.

Martinez looked at it now, brow furrowed slightly. The imperfection didn’t bother them. It never had. It felt honest. They reached up and brushed two fingers over the line of ink and scar, tracing it without pressure. Not reverent, but steady. A ritual. One they did more often than they admitted.

The tattoo wasn’t just for Diego anymore. Not just a memory. It was a map of who they had been, who they had carried, who they had lost. There were other names stitched into it now, not in letters, but in the shape of the stars, the angles, the way the lines bent. Raimi, lost forever. Kerren, alive and a memory. Banik, lost years later. Terrow…disappeared, post war, post-77th.

Even Jace, though his name had never been said aloud in that context. Jace was a scar of a different kind. Not absence, but endurance, a shadow they still felt just behind them even after all these years.

Martinez studied their own reflection. The soft bronze of their skin. The tension that still lived in their posture, even after all this time. The way their mouth had settled into something quieter over the years. Their eyes met their own.

They didn’t say anything. But in the mirror, the ink caught the light. And the scar? The scar still shone, faint and white. Not a flaw. A seam. They lowered the shirt, slow. Let it fall back into place. Then they picked up their jacket again. Smoothed the collar. Slid it over their shoulders, one arm at a time, and let the weight settle back in.

It felt like armour. But the ink beneath it? That was theirs.

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