Held in Reserve: Folded Inward [1/2]

Posted on Mon May 4th, 2026 @ 1:41pm by Lieutenant Darik Moreau

2,954 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Ghost Starship
Location: Tycho City, Luna
Timeline: [Character Backpost] 2375

2375, Tycho City, Luna

It had been cold yesterday and it was cold again today.

Not a dramatic cold, not the clean engineered chill of a docking bay or the metallic bite of museum storage rooms, but the quieter sort that lived in the seams of Luna and settled itself into Darik’s body as if it had found the right home. He was eleven now, old enough to know that the heating in the flat worked perfectly well and that other people did not seem to feel what he felt, old enough to understand that this was simply part of him. He was cold unless the heating was turned up, so much that his father would wear a tee shirt and shorts, would walk barefooted around their home with the computer playing country songs on low. The mournful noise was...soothing in a way. Sometimes, they'd sing alone.

But outside the flat it was cold. His hands felt it. The tips of his ears. The cords at his neck held the chill longest, and he disliked the feeling of exposed air against them when the day was like this.

So he wore the scarf.

It sat wrapped once around his neck and tucked neatly into the front of his coat, the dark fabric lying flat against the lines there. It was not thick by Human standards, though Cardassian things were rarely made to look soft, and the weave carried a subtle geometric pattern in thread only a fraction darker than the base colour. It was the sort of detail that did not stand out unless somebody looked too closely. Darik mostly had his mother’s colouring in that way too, dark hair and pale skin that showed the blue undertones more in cold light, yet flushed warmer easily as if it needed to prove his human heritage. It sat there in the blue of his eyes, same as his father, and the shape of his jaw and mouth.

On Cardassia Prime, the scarf had never looked strange. Here it did, though only at close range, and Darik knew better than to invite people close unless he had to. His mother had wrapped it around him herself one day they had taken an evening walk and he had complained of the cold, drawing it into place with those firm, exact hands of hers and telling him there was no virtue in discomfort if intelligence could solve the problem. Darik remembered that every time he wore it. He did not wear it often now. Some things were easier if kept private. But the cold had been needling at him since breakfast, and this morning practicality had won.

There had been a report playing quietly near the school entrance as children came in, all noise and bags and unfinished conversations, and Darik had caught only enough of it to understand the shape. Federation losses. Another engagement. Another voice kept steady for public comfort while naming places where people had died. Some children were crying. Some did not show up for a week or two, after they had been told they had lost parents, family. The war was close to everyone now, every citizen living in the Federation.

Darik had paused only briefly before continuing down the corridor, but the words had stayed with him as such words always did, tucked somewhere behind his ribs where they could not be answered. He had thought of Cardassia Prime first, because he always did, and then of his mother, because that thought followed whether he wanted it to or not. He wondered what she was doing, if she was alive, if she was okay. Every time he heard of a Cardassian ship destroyed, or a planet razed, he bit hard on the inside of his cheek to look neutral. Locked in place.

Above reproach.

He had wondered, for one brief stupid second, whether she was cold too, and then he had pushed the thought down so firmly it almost felt physical. There was no use in thoughts that could not be spoken aloud. There was certainly no use in carrying them on his face.

By lunch the school had that brittle, strained air it sometimes developed when adults were worried and attempting not to show it. Instructions came a little faster. Smiles looked assembled rather than felt. Two teachers stood too close together by the corridor junction, talking in voices that were level enough to attract more attention rather than less. When Darik passed them, one glanced at him and then away with practised politeness. He was used to that. Not enough for it to mean nothing, but enough to recognise the shape of it and understand that noticing did not improve matters.

He took his lunch outside with an old-fashioned book rather than a PADD tucked under one arm and settled on the low wall by the courtyard rather than the bench. Nothing special, there had been warm rice cakes with vegetables from the replicator. He added some chilli oil to it out of habit.The bench was warmed from below but too exposed, too much in the middle of things. The wall let him keep his back to stone and see the doors. He had learned quickly, after starting school, where he was most likely to be left alone.

He sat with one knee drawn up slightly, long fingers hooked around the spine of the book, the scarf tucked close, and watched the pale dome-light slide across the paving. He was thin in the way boys often were before they suddenly were not, all wrists and angles and careful economy of movement, but there was already something deliberate in the way he held himself. He had learnt that stillness could do the work of invisibility if you got it right.

He had just opened the book when somebody said, “What’s that,” and the tone was enough to make him look up before he had properly chosen to.

Three boys stood a little way off, older by perhaps a year or two. Darik knew them by sight. One had a brother in an upper year. Another had once laughed when Darik’s accent slipped in class and turned one word too Cardassian. The tallest of them had broad shoulders for his age and the vague confidence of somebody who had not yet been taught caution by consequence.

Darik lowered his eyes briefly to the page before looking back up at them, expression composed. “A book,” he said, holding the place with one finger, because sometimes answering the wrong question made people lose interest.

The tallest boy gave a short snort and stepped a fraction closer. “Not that,” he said, his eyeline dropping to Darik’s throat, and Darik felt his own hand move almost unconsciously to the scarf where it vanished into his coat. “What sort of scarf is it.”

There was no point pretending not to understand. Darik lifted his chin a little, blue eyes steady despite the cold feeling that had begun low in his stomach. “It is from Cardassia,” he said, keeping his voice even and neat, the way his father liked, the way teachers liked.

For a moment there was a small silence, and then one of the others laughed under his breath. “Thought so,” he muttered, folding his arms.

The tallest boy looked at him with open distaste that was trying to pass itself off as curiosity. “Why would you wear that here,” he asked, and Darik could hear at once that it was not a real question. Real questions had space in them for an answer. But truthfully, in this moment, he wondered that too.

How could I have been this stupid.

“Because I was cold,” Darik replied quietly, his fingers tightening very slightly on the edge of the book before he let them ease again. The answer was simple and true, which was often the safest kind.

The boy’s mouth twisted. “Couldn’t you get a normal one,” he asked, and one of the others smirked as if that had been clever.

Darik glanced back down at the open book, though he was no longer reading it. “This one works,” he said quietly, shifting his thumb against the page as if the conversation bored him more than it did. That was not entirely an act. He had already begun to understand that cruelty was often repetitive long before it was original.

He heard the scrape of a shoe against stone and the change in weight that meant someone moving closer than they needed to. His shoulders drew tighter under the coat, but he kept the rest of himself still. They were after a reaction...tears, or anger. Darik knew better than to give them anything that would get him in trouble. One of the boys peered at the edge of the scarf with exaggerated interest. “Looks military,” he said, voice filled with something dark, something that made Darik's jaw tighten a fraction, internal warning going up. “Looks like enemy stuff.”

“It is not,” Darik answered, just a touch quicker than he should have, finally closing the book over one finger and holding it against his knee. He kept his voice level, but he could feel his pulse now in the base of his throat where the scarf sat.

“How do you know,” the tallest boy asked, and there it was, that ugly little note beneath the words. Not interest. Challenge. A dare dressed up as conversation, a hint of...not threat, but something that felt primal.

Because she gave it to me, Darik thought at once. Because I know what her hands felt like and I know what state issue looks like and not everything that comes from Cardassia belongs to war or the military. But none of those things could be said here, not safely, not with these boys watching his face as if waiting to catch something alive in it. So he only said, “I know,” and wished, suddenly and sharply, that he had left the scarf in his room after all.

The tallest boy reached down before Darik could judge whether movement would help or worsen things and caught the end of the scarf where it disappeared into his coat. The tug was not hard at first. Casual almost. Testing. Darik felt the pull at his throat and went very still.

He could have reacted. He was quick enough. He could have stood in a rush and caught the boy’s wrist or shoved him back or raised his voice. But he knew already, in the half-conscious way children know the rules adults pretend are not there, that the moment he used his hands the story would change. That would mean that this became a fight, one he started.

And he had to be above reproach.

So he held himself where he was, spine straightening by degrees, and said, “Please let go,” as calmly as he could, with the book still in one hand and the fingers of the other pressed flat against the stone beside him to keep them from doing anything else.

The boy pulled harder instead.

The scarf slid free from Darik’s coat with a rough drag, tightening briefly against Darik’s neck in a way that made the skin on his neck cords burn before the tucked end came loose. Cold air struck the skin beneath it at once. One of the others laughed, not loud enough to draw attention from any grown-ups nearby, just enough for it to hurt. “Maybe you shouldn’t wear enemy things…Spoonhead,” he said, and the words settled in Darik with a clean, bright sort of hurt that was worse for being expected.

The tallest boy had the scarf hanging from one hand now, studying it with narrowed eyes as if looking at something unpleasant but interesting. “It doesn’t even look right,” he said, and then, because thoughtlessness and cruelty often sat very close together, he gave it a careless jerk.

The fabric gave with a small sound.

It was tiny. Barely anything. A soft parting of thread near one edge where the seam had been strained. But Darik heard it and felt it. For one awful second the courtyard seemed to narrow around that sound alone, and he stared at the break in the fabric as if looking hard enough might undo it.

No one moved, not for a breath, and then finally Darik stood. He did not spring up. That would have looked like temper. He unfolded himself carefully, book still in hand, shoulders squared beneath the coat, and looked not at the scarf but at the boy holding it. His face felt oddly blank, as if everything expressive had retreated somewhere out of reach. “Give it back,” he said, and his voice had changed just enough that the tallest boy blinked.

“I only touched it,” the boy said, too quickly now, thrusting the scarf towards him in the awkward manner of somebody who had not expected the moment to become real.

Darik took it with both hands. The tear was small...Repairable, could do it himself or ask his father. The thought helped the lump in his throat, but then having to explain how...No. He'd repair it himself. He held tightly to the thought, because beneath it something else was rising, something hot and humiliating that wanted to shove, to snatch, to make them all step back and leave him alone. He folded the damaged edge inward with his thumb as one of the other boys shrugged and said, “It’s only a scarf,” trying for dismissive and almost reaching uneasy instead.

Darik almost said something, blue eyes snapping to the boy's face. His mouth wanted to, it moved, moved around shapes of sounds that were not Federation Standard. But he did not speak.

“Darik.” The voice came from behind them, and when Darik turned he saw one of the lunch supervisors standing there with her brows pulled together, her expression not angry so much as weary at the shape of a problem arriving before her. She had probably only seen the end of it. Four boys standing too close. Damaged clothing in one pair of hands. Enough to know there had been trouble, not enough to know what kind. “What is going on here,” she half-asked, half-demanded, and the courtyard fell into that shallow hush children made when deciding who was going to be blamed.

No one answered immediately. Darik could feel all three boys looking at him. Waiting. The scarf sat in his hands with the torn seam hidden under his thumb, and in that moment he understood exactly how it would go if he told it plainly. There would be questions. There would be denials. Somebody would look at his face while making their decision and think about the war, think about what people with his features were doing to Federation citizens. So he lowered his eyes first, swallowing back the bitterness. He breathed slowly, even when something inside of him wanted to push, to hit, to kick, to run. “It caught,” he said quietly, smoothing the damaged edge once as if demonstrating the fact of it. “It was an accident.” The words tasted like burnt things but he made sure his voice stayed level. He had too many eyes on him now, people who had ignored him before now staring to see what would happen.

The lunch supervisor looked from him to the others, and her mouth tightened. “Was it,” she asked, though it was clear from her expression that she knew she was being offered the version of events most convenient to everybody present. But she was not pushing hard.

The tallest boy nodded too quickly. “Yeah,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “It just got caught.”

For a second Darik thought the supervisor might push. Instead she exhaled softly and gestured to the doors. “Inside,” she said. “All of you. Now.”

“Sorry,” Darik said quietly out of habit, because it was safer to apologise to grown ups. He picked up the book and the bowl of his uneaten lunch.

Shoes scuffed against the stone and the moment dissolved the way bad moments so often did in public places, not resolved, not mended, simply spread thin enough for adults to step over. As the boys moved past him, one muttered under his breath, “Shouldn’t wear enemy stuff, then,” and Darik heard it perfectly. He did not turn his head. He did not answer. He only wrapped the scarf back into place with careful, precise fingers and kept the torn edge tucked out of sight.

Inside, the corridor warmth felt false on his face. During the afternoon break he took himself to the washroom and locked himself into a stall, not because he meant to cry but because he needed one minute in which no one could look at him and decide what his expression meant. Sitting on the closed lid, book balanced on one knee, he unfolded the scarf in his lap and examined the damage. It was no longer than the top joint of his thumb, a neat parting in the seam where the thread had pulled free. It was not ruined. He told himself that twice, then a third time, pressing the edge flat between his fingers with such care that his knuckles whitened. Cloth could be repaired. That was not the same as damage never having happened, but it was something. And it would have to do.

He wrapped it back around his neck before the bell rang, folding the torn part inward.


[TBC]


Lt. Darik Moreau
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Missouri

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