Final Fuse

Posted on Sun May 24th, 2026 @ 11:24am by Lieutenant Evelyn Stewart & Lieutenant Tollan Yara & Lieutenant Commander Keishara Davaris & Lieutenant JG Koaruh Avestro
Edited on on Sun May 24th, 2026 @ 11:25am

4,404 words; about a 22 minute read

Mission: Year One: The Point of No Return
Location: USS Moore - DMZ
Timeline: MD: 010 - 19:30hrs

The doors parted and Stewart stepped through without slowing, the turn toward the bar already in motion before she registered the room. Same as always. No thought in it. Just habit carrying her the last few steps until her hand found the edge of the counter and she settled into place.

It should’ve felt normal.

It didn’t.

The room hadn’t changed—same low hum of voices, same clink of glass, same easy rhythm of people coming off shift and trying not to carry the day with them. She’d moved through it a hundred times without thinking. Tonight she noticed it too much. Or maybe she just couldn’t drop into it the way she usually did.

Greco’s voice from the night before sat there, clean and sharp. Not replaying. Not loud. Just… fixed. The kind of correction you didn’t argue with, didn’t shrug off. You took it, and it stayed.

She exhaled quietly through her nose, shifting her weight against the bar, fingers tapping once against the surface before going still again. No drink yet. No signal for one either. Just standing there like she was waiting for something she hadn’t decided on.

Her gaze moved out over the room, not really looking for anyone, just letting it pass—crew she knew, faces she didn’t, small pockets of conversation that carried just enough to register and then fade.

Then it caught.

Keishara.

Not a double take. Not a reaction.

Just… there.

And suddenly the rest of the room didn’t matter as much.

Keishara had been there long enough for the room to settle around her.

Not hiding, not watching the door like she expected trouble, just sitting with a drink she’d barely touched and the sort of stillness that made people think twice before mistaking solitude for invitation. The DMZ moved the way it always did at this hour, carrying the aftertaste of the duty day in with every new arrival. Tired laughter. Glass on glass. The soft rise and fall of conversations that weren’t meant to be important and somehow always were.

She’d been half listening to none of it.

Then the doors opened.

She didn’t turn straight away. Didn’t need to. Some presences announced themselves before they crossed half the room, and Evelyn’s had always had a way of finding the edges of things. By the time Kei looked up, it was only enough to confirm what she already knew.

There she was. At the bar. Looking like habit had brought her there before the rest of her had caught up.

Keishara let her gaze rest for a second, no longer than that, then looked away again and lifted her glass. No challenge in it. No invitation either. Just the quiet acknowledgement of someone noticing exactly what was in front of her and deciding, for now, not to force it into shape.

Whatever still sat between them hadn’t vanished. It had just gone still, the way a live wire sometimes did before anyone was foolish enough to touch it.

So Kei stayed where she was, one shoulder angled toward the room, expression unreadable to anyone who didn’t know her well enough to catch the difference between calm and restraint. She wasn’t angry in the hot, easy sense of it anymore. That had burned off. What remained was cooler and harder to ignore: disappointment, yes, but also the clear memory of where the line had been drawn and how deliberately it had been crossed.

She took another sip, eyes drifting back across the room without lingering when they found Evelyn again.

If Stewart wanted to come over, she would. If she didn’t, that was fine too.

Keishara wasn’t going to chase her across the DMZ for a conversation neither of them was ready to fake.

Stewart didn’t hesitate this time. The second her eyes landed on Keishara, the decision was already made. Whatever else the room was doing—noise, movement, people—it flattened out into something she didn’t have to deal with.

She pushed off the bar and went straight for her. No drift, no pretense of passing by—just a direct line that didn’t bother softening itself.

She stopped at the table, close enough to make it clear this wasn’t optional, but not crowding it. Not yet. One hand came to rest lightly against the edge of the table—not forceful, but placed, like she was already claiming the space.

“Keishara.” Not sharp, but not neutral either. Her jaw set for a second before she eased it, like she was keeping a lid on something that didn’t want to stay contained.

“I need to talk to you.” Low, controlled. It didn’t carry, but there was weight behind it—expectation threaded through it, like this wasn’t something that required agreement.

A beat passed, her gaze holding, not giving her an out, not looking anywhere else.

“Now.”

Keishara looked up properly this time.

She’d felt Evelyn coming before she reached the table. The set of her shoulders, the way she moved in a straight line instead of letting the room soften it, the tension sitting under her control like something barely leashed. It didn’t take much guesswork to know what this was about. The corridor. The brig. The line that had already been crossed once and, apparently, wasn’t done being tested.

Kei didn’t move her glass. Didn’t lean back. Didn’t make a point of making room either.

“Do you,” she said, her voice calm enough that it almost passed for gentle.

Her eyes dropped briefly to the hand on the table, then lifted again to Evelyn’s face.

A beat passed before she went on.

“Alright.” She sat back a fraction, not yielding the space, just settling in it. “Then talk.”

No challenge in it. No invitation to a fight. Just a very clear refusal to be dragged into one.

Whatever this was, Keishara wasn’t going to meet it at Evelyn’s temperature.

Stewart didn’t answer immediately.

Her gaze held Keishara’s for a beat, then shifted past her—taking in the table properly this time. The extra presence. Familiar faces.

Too many people. Too many familiar faces who would know she got dressed down like a cadet because Keishara tattled.

That was enough.

Her attention snapped back to Keishara, the restraint she’d been holding tightening into something cleaner, harder.

“Not here.”

Low. Final.

She stepped in just enough to close the distance, cutting into the edge of the table without acknowledging the others. Her hand moved without hesitation, fingers closing around the fabric at Keishara’s sleeve. Not rough, but not light either—familiar in the way of someone who didn’t consider whether she should.

A small pull followed.

Not enough to drag. Just enough to make it clear this wasn’t staying where it was.

She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t need to.

Keishara felt the contact before she properly registered the grip.

Not pain. Not force. Just that instant, skin-deep jolt of someone deciding they had the right to put hands on her and move her where they wanted. It hit a nerve far older than the corridor argument, older than the ship, older than anything Evelyn could possibly understand in that moment.

Her gaze dropped to the hand on her sleeve.

Then lifted.

Around the table, the air changed. Yara went still in the way medics did when they were suddenly very alert without wanting to look it. Koaruh, beside her, didn’t move either, but the ease had gone out of him completely. Even without looking at them, Kei could feel the room tightening at the edges.

She set her glass down with deliberate care and rose from her chair in one smooth motion, drawing herself up until she and Evelyn were eye to eye. She didn’t jerk her arm back. Didn’t make a show of peeling the hand off. She just stood, letting the height and stillness of her answer do the work first.

“Evelyn,” she said quietly, and there was nothing soft in it now, “take your hand off me.”

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

Keishara held her there with her eyes, feeling the heat coming off her in waves now, all that brittle, sharpened emotion Stewart was trying so hard to keep packed down into something usable. This was about the brig. About the corridor. About pride, and embarrassment, and whatever version of the story Evelyn had been telling herself since then. Kei knew that much without needing it said.

She eased her arm free, not roughly, but with unmistakable finality, and stepped clear of the table so there was no chance of Yara or Koaruh getting caught in whatever this was turning into.

“If you need to talk, then talk,” she said, calm as ever, but cooler now, less willing to indulge the theatre of it. “But you don’t walk up to me in a room full of people, put your hands on me, and decide I’m following you somewhere like I don’t get a say.”

A beat passed. The hum of the DMZ seemed suddenly very far away.

Her expression didn’t harden so much as settle.

“I’m not interested in a private scene,” Kei went on. “Not when the last one ended with you trying to turn your mistake into my problem.” Her eyes flicked over Evelyn’s face, reading every ounce of the anger she wasn’t hiding half as well as she thought she was. “So if you’ve got something to say, say it here. Or don’t.”

She stopped there. Didn’t jab. Didn’t provoke. Didn’t offer an inch more than that.

Then she simply stood her ground, one shoulder angled slightly away from the table now, putting herself between Evelyn and the people sitting behind her without making a production of it. Calm. Open. Ready.

And very clearly not going anywhere.

Stewart stilled.

No?

For a split second, her grip loosened—then she let go of Keishara’s sleeve entirely, the fabric slipping from her fingers like the contact itself had stopped making sense.

It didn’t register as refusal. Just… familiar. The same tone. The same calm, measured certainty from the corridor—like Keishara could step in, draw the line, and expect Stewart to fall in behind it.

Her gaze flicked—quick, sharp—past her. Yara was already turning back in, conversation picking up again like this was over, like it had been settled without her.

Like Keishara had decided it was done.

Her attention snapped back.

Still calm. Still standing there like she could just… set the line and that was it.

Like she got to tell her no.

Something in Stewart’s chest tightened—hot, immediate.

Her jaw clenched hard enough to ache.

Control.

Nothing.

No.

That didn’t get to stand.

She stepped in—

—and drove a hard punch across Keishara’s temple, fast and clean, no hesitation behind it—the kind of hit that snapped through bone and balance with a sharp, cracking force that cut straight through the room.

The sound cracked louder than it should have, sharp enough to cut through the low hum of the DMZ. Conversations faltered. Glass stilled mid-air. Chairs scraped as heads turned, the room tightening around the impact all at once.

Stewart didn’t stop.

She stepped in again, closing the space, shoulders squared, posture forward—like she wasn’t done yet before a hand caught her arm.

It was Yara's. Not rough, but firm enough to hold her from stepping fully back in, body angled between instinct and restraint.

“Couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” Stewart bit out, low and sharp, breath uneven now, not even looking at the hand on her arm. “Had to take it straight to him—” A harsh, humorless breath.

Her eyes stayed locked on Keishara, something uglier cutting through now—resentment sharpened into something deliberate. “Couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” she added as a bitter taunt, watching the security chief look back in stunned disbelief of what she had just done.

Keishara heard the taunt through the ringing in her ear.

For a second, the DMZ sat oddly around her. Too bright at the edges. Too quiet in the middle. Her hand was still on the table where instinct had put it, the throb at her temple already spreading down behind her eye.

But she was still standing.

Slowly, she straightened.

Yara had Evelyn by the arm, holding her back just enough to keep her from stepping in again. Around them, the lounge had gone still. Koaruh was on his feet. A dozen conversations had died mid-word. Everyone was watching the ugly little shape the night had become.

Keishara looked at Evelyn. Really looked at her.

The anger was there, but underneath it was something colder than that. Disbelief. Not that Evelyn had a temper. Not that she could be cruel when cornered. Kei already knew both.

It was that she had chosen this.

In public. In front of witnesses. After everything had already been handled.

Keishara’s mouth twitched once, but it wasn’t a smile.

“Let her go, Yara.”

The doctor’s hand tightened for half a heartbeat, hesitation clear in the set of his shoulders.

Kei didn’t look away from Evelyn.

“Now.”

Yara released her.

The moment Evelyn was free, Keishara stepped away from the table, giving herself room to move. Not much. Just enough. She rolled one shoulder once, settled her weight, and lifted her hands. Open. Ready.

“You wanted a reaction,” she said, voice low and level. “Here it is.”

She didn’t rush in.

That was the difference between them.

Evelyn came first, fast and furious, throwing herself into the space as if momentum could make the answer different. Keishara slipped the first swing by half a step, felt the air of it skim past her cheek, and caught the second on her forearm. Pain sparked up her arm, clean and useful. She drove a short strike into Evelyn’s ribs, not enough to break, enough to take breath and rhythm.

Evelyn staggered, but she didn’t stop.

A chair went over behind them as the two women moved, the room scattering back in a sudden scrape of boots and glass. Someone swore. Chairs scraped along the floor. Someone else shouted for Security, but Kei barely heard it over the pulse in her skull and the hard, familiar narrowing of a fight that Evelyn had chosen to keep alive.

Stewart hit the edge of the table hard enough to feel it bite into her lower back.

A sharp sound slipped out of her before she could stop it—small, involuntary, more breath than voice.

Didn’t matter.

The shot to the ribs hurt. Took air. Made her stumble half a step.

That was all it got.

Keishara wanted space.

Stewart crashed it.

Immediately.

No reset. No circling.

She surged back in before Kei could settle her feet, shoulder driving hard into her center as one hand snapped behind the back of her neck and yanked down—not clean, not controlled, just forcing posture where Stewart wanted it.

Close.

Ugly.

A short punch landed first, tight and fast toward Kei’s jaw where there wasn’t room to throw properly.

Then another—shorter, sharper—clipping high near the cheekbone.

Fast.

Mean.

Stewart crowded harder, forehead tucked in beneath Kei’s jawline to smother posture and keep the taller woman from getting upright. No distance. No leverage.

Her knee came up hard into Kei’s midsection.

Not wild.

Deliberate.

The second Kei’s body shifted around it, another followed quick toward the gut before she could fully brace.

The moment Kei tried to square back up, Stewart clipped her with a short elbow high near the temple—tight, sharp, no wind-up behind it. Too close for anything cleaner.

A jab snapped quick toward Kei’s face the second she found an opening.

Then another short elbow inside.

High.

Again.

Keep her covered.

Don’t let her settle.

The table rattled violently behind them, glasses skipping from the impact. One tipped clean off and shattered against the deck.

Around them, the room had gone still.

Crew had backed their chairs away, conversations dead mid-sentence, people caught in that stunned hesitation where nobody moved first but nobody looked away either.

Yara had started toward them again, stopping short. Koaruh stood rigid a few paces away, completely still now.

From behind the bar, Char came around.

“Enough.”

Stewart either didn’t hear him or didn’t care.

She shoved forward again, trying to walk Kei backward through sheer pressure, still crowding too close for distance to matter. Another short elbow came inside, quick and dirty, aimed high as she forced forward.

Her foot caught awkwardly against the leg of a shifted chair.

The stumble barely registered before momentum carried through anyway.

Weight pitched wrong.

The space between them collapsed unevenly as Stewart drove forward harder than her footing could support, grip still high, shoulder still forcing in close as balance gave way and both of them lurched together out of center.

Keishara lost the space.

There was no graceful way around it. Evelyn crashed in too fast, too close, and the first short punch caught her along the jaw before she could turn enough to dull it. The second clipped high across her cheekbone, sharp enough to make her eye water. Then Evelyn’s hand was at the back of her neck, pulling her down, forcing the fight into a cramped, ugly knot of shoulders and elbows and breath.

Kei didn’t waste energy trying to wrench upright. Not yet.

She tucked her chin, brought one forearm in tight to shield the worst of the blows and took the first knee with a grunt that she hated giving away. The second drove in before she could fully brace, punching the air out of her in a short, hard burst. Pain flared through her middle, hot and immediate, but it was useful too. It told her where Evelyn’s weight was. Where the pressure was coming from. Where the mistake would be.

Evelyn kept crowding. Keishara let her.

Not because she wanted to.

Because there was no point fighting the storm from the middle of it.

The elbow near her temple flashed white through her vision again, and for a breath the room blurred at the edges. Char’s voice cut through somewhere nearby, low and angry, but distant beneath the ringing in Kei’s ears and the press of Evelyn’s body trying to drive her backward.

Her foot caught awkwardly against the leg of a shifted chair.

The stumble barely registered before momentum carried through anyway.

Weight pitched wrong.

The space between them collapsed unevenly as Stewart drove forward harder than her footing could support, grip still high, shoulder still forcing in close as balance gave way and both of them lurched together out of centre.

Keishara felt it happen.

Not saw it. Felt it.

The pressure shifted through Evelyn’s hips, the pull at the back of Kei’s neck losing its anchor for half a second as Stewart’s weight overcommitted. That was all she needed.

Kei’s left hand snapped up and caught the wrist behind her neck, peeling it down and away before Evelyn could drag her in again. Her right forearm came across hard, not wild, not panicked, just a brutal, compact strike driven into the side of Stewart’s ribs where the earlier shot had already softened her.

The sound Evelyn made was small and sharp.

Kei didn’t give her time to recover from it.

She stepped in instead of back, cutting off the space Evelyn had been trying to own, shoulder driving into her chest as one hand hooked behind her elbow and the other caught the front of her uniform. A short head turn took the next elbow off target, then Kei struck again — heel of the palm, up and in beneath the jaw, hard enough to snap Stewart’s head back and break the forward pressure completely.

No flourish.

No anger wasted.

Just consequence.

The room seemed to inhale around them.

Evelyn staggered, still trying to come forward because pride had not caught up with pain yet. Kei saw it in her eyes — the refusal, the panic underneath the fury, the stupid, stubborn reach for another round even as her body started telling her the truth.

Keishara’s expression flattened.

“Don’t.”

Stewart came anyway.

Kei met her with a low kick to the outside of the thigh, just above the knee, sharp enough to buckle the leg without destroying it. As Evelyn dipped, Kei’s fist drove short into the midsection, not theatrical, not a haymaker, just a clean, ugly punch that folded the breath out of her and stopped her upright.

That one changed the fight.

Evelyn’s guard dropped on instinct.

Kei stepped through and hit her again, elbow tight across the cheekbone, controlled but merciless enough to send her sideways into the table. Glass jumped. Someone behind them swore. Yara’s voice cut in, “Kei—”

“Stay back,” Keishara said.

Not loud.

Absolutely final.

Stewart pushed off the table, but slower now. Worse. Angry enough to keep going and hurt enough to make bad choices. Kei’s head still rang, her ribs still ached from the knees, but there was a cold line running through her now, clear as a blade.

This wasn’t a conversation.

This wasn’t a warning.

This was a senior officer who had assaulted another officer in a public lounge and was still trying to continue.

So Kei ended it.

She caught Evelyn’s next desperate swing on the outside, stepped in under it, and drove her knee hard into Stewart’s abdomen. The impact lifted the air out of her. Before she could fold all the way down, Kei caught her by the shoulder and turned, sweeping the weakened leg from under her.

Evelyn hit the deck hard on her side, the impact knocking the last of the fight loose for a breath.

Keishara was on her before she could roll.

One knee pinned the back of Stewart’s thigh. One hand took the wrist and flattened it to the deck. The other pressed high between the shoulder blades, forcing her chest down and taking away the leverage to rise. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t cruel either. It was exactly as much force as the moment required, and not a sliver more.

Evelyn tried to buck.

Kei drove her weight down and twisted the wrist just enough to make the point.

“No.”

The word was quiet and terrible.

Evelyn’s body went tight beneath her, pain and fury locking together.

Keishara leaned down, breath controlled despite the pulse hammering behind her eye.

“You picked the wrong fight.”

Not shouted. Not smug.

Just true.

Around them, the DMZ had frozen into silence. Char stood half out from behind the bar. Koaruh’s comm badge was already open. Yara hovered near the edge, furious and calculating, one hand on his kit, waiting for the second he could move in.

Keishara didn’t look at any of them yet.

Her focus stayed on Evelyn.

“Move again,” she said, voice low enough for Stewart first, the room second, “and I’ll make sure you can’t.”

A beat.

Then louder, without taking her hand off the restraint, “Security to the DMZ. Lieutenant Stewart is under arrest.”

Only then did she glance toward Yara, one eye already starting to water from the hit to her temple.

“Check her first,” Kei said, still pinning Evelyn down. “Then me.”

Her gaze dropped back to Stewart, and there was no triumph in it. No satisfaction. Only the cold, disappointed certainty of someone who had stopped asking why and started dealing with what was in front of her.

“You’re going to the brig,” she said.

Plain.

Final.

“And you’re walking there if you can.”

Yara moved.

“Enough.”

The word cut sharp through the DMZ as his hand closed firmly around Keishara’s arm, pulling her back before the moment had a chance to turn into something worse.

“You’re done - both of you are.”

He stepped between them automatically, broad enough to block the line if he had to, one hand still lightly on Kei’s arm.

Koaruh had already moved.

By the time Yara separated them, he could see Koaruh was already there — stepping instinctively into the open space near Stewart, angled just enough between them to intercept if she suddenly surged back in again.

Stewart shoved herself upright hard, breathing unevenly, fury still radiating off her in waves. Her jaw flexed once.

Twice.

Like she was swallowing something she very much wanted to say.

Or do.

Yara’s attention flicked briefly toward her, then back to Keishara, eyes catching the swelling beginning near her temple.

“She can cool off in the brig,” he said flatly. “You’re coming to Sickbay.”

No softness.

No room for debate.

“You likely have a concussion.”

Then his gaze shifted toward Koaruh.

A sharp gesture followed — a finger toward Stewart, then a pointed motion toward the far exit across the DMZ.

“Koaruh, get her out of here,” he ordered before adding, “See to it that she makes it to the brig.”

He caught the small nod from the counselor out of the corner of his eye.

For a second, it looked like Stewart might still turn around. Her eyes flicked once toward Keishara over Yara’s shoulder, anger still hot enough to bite. Then she turned sharply and started for the opposite doors instead, every step radiating pissed-off compliance.

Yara watched just long enough to make sure she kept moving. Only then did he turn back to Keishara.

A quiet breath left him.

Disappointed. Tired.

“Let’s go.”

He let go of her arm then, expecting movement, already turning toward the exit.

But not far.

Still close enough that if she decided to push the matter, he was already in position to stop another bad decision before it started as they headed for the door.

 

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