The Weight of Her Name
Posted on Fri Aug 8th, 2025 @ 8:49am by Lieutenant Commander Keishara Davaris
Edited on on Fri Aug 8th, 2025 @ 8:51am
1,152 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission:
Year One: Strange Bedfellows
Location: Security Office, USS Moore
Timeline: MD 038 - 2330 hours
The lights were dimmed low, the hum of the ship a soft thrum beneath the deck. A lone padd sat on Keishara Davaris’ desk, its display still active—cursor blinking, waiting for input. The header was official: Commendation Draft – Ensign Lirien Vos – Action Report: Cargo Bay 4 Incident.
Kei sat with her elbows on the desk, fingers steepled in front of her mouth, eyes on the screen but not reading it. The room was quiet, save for the occasional creak of bulkheads adjusting to the ship’s motion. She’d closed the door half an hour ago. She hadn’t typed a word.
This should have been easy.
It wasn’t.
She finally reached for the padd.
Her fingers tapped slowly—deliberately—each word heavier than it needed to be.
“Ensign Vos demonstrated exceptional situational awareness and resolve during the containment breach in Cargo Bay 4...”
Kei paused.
Her thumb hovered over the backspace key. She stared at the sentence like it might judge her. Her jaw tightened.
Vos had reacted well. Had read the room, adjusted tactics mid-move, and took command when her superior hesitated. She deserved this.
So why did it feel like hypocrisy to write it?
Kei sat back in the chair, exhaled through her nose, and let her eyes drift to the top corner of the padd’s frame. The ship's time flickered quietly: 23:42.
A memory surfaced.
The stench came first—burned circuitry and Nausicaan sweat. Then came the dull roar of the brig doors slamming shut behind her. She was younger then, still on the USS Oban, her uniform half-torn, one glove missing, knuckles split open. The Nausicaan pirate hadn’t been a threat after ten seconds. But she hadn’t stopped.
Not when he smirked.
Not when he spat blood and said something vile about her sister—who he never even knew.
She’d broken two of his ribs and his orbital socket. No weapon. Just rage and training.
Her CO had pulled her off personally. She remembered the look. Not fear. Not disappointment. Just calculation—like he was deciding if she was a liability now.
The formal reprimand was swift. No court-martial. No charges. But the words on her record had been sharp.
“Demonstrated disregard for proportional force protocols. Officer poses potential volatility in high-stress detainment scenarios.”
It was the first time Starfleet had told her she might not belong.
She hadn’t slept for three days after that. Had spent the nights re-wrapping her hands, sitting in the dark, wondering if she was just pretending to be something she wasn’t.
And now… now she was writing commendations?
She glanced back at the padd.
A bitter smile touched her lips, barely there.
“...resolve during the containment breach in Cargo Bay 4.”
Her hand flexed once—reflexively, remembering blood on her gloves—and then she resumed typing.
“Ensign Vos demonstrated exceptional situational awareness and resolve during the containment breach in Cargo Bay 4.”
She reread the line. It felt sterile. Detached. Safe.
Just like her first few years after the Oban.
After the reprimand, they hadn’t reassigned her, but things changed. The warmth some of the crew had once shown cooled. She noticed how conversations stopped when she entered a room. How requests were routed around her. How junior officers hesitated to spar with her in training sessions.
She’d thought about leaving. More than once.
Starfleet wasn’t the only path. She could’ve gone back to freelance work, taken protection contracts, disappeared into border space like she had before. No uniforms. No lectures. No paperwork.
But then came Chin’toka.
The corridor breach. The pressure alarms. The fire suppression systems stuck in diagnostic. She remembered the sound of boots scraping metal as they retreated. She remembered the tremor in Lieutenant Palero’s voice when he’d said, “We’re not getting out.”
She’d been the one who stayed.
Held the breach point.
Took a glancing disruptor blast that melted part of her vest into her shoulder.
The medics had later said it was reckless. The CO said it was heroic. Kei didn’t agree with either. It was just what needed to be done.
But it was also the first time someone called her a leader.
She blinked, came back to the padd. Her hand moved again.
“When faced with rapidly escalating risk, Ensign Vos maintained focus under pressure, supported a wounded crewman, and executed a full lockdown of the lower bay with minimal guidance.”
She paused. That sounded more like it.
She leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling, arms crossed. She’d stayed because Starfleet, for all its rules and structures, had eventually come to see what she really was—not perfect, not polished, but someone who wouldn’t look away when things went sideways.
And now, apparently, she was the one people looked to.
She never quite got used to that.
Kei leaned forward again, jaw tight with the kind of tension that came not from anger, but from deliberation. The padd’s cursor blinked beneath her last line, as if waiting to test her nerve.
She typed the remainder quickly. Clean. Professional.
“Her actions ensured the safety of two crew members and prevented further escalation of the containment breach. I recommend formal commendation for quick response under duress and leadership initiative.”
She stared at the full report for a few seconds, then moved her thumb to submit.
But didn’t press it.
Instead, she tapped the menu bar, added a supplemental notation—not required. Not standard. Not regulation.
Just... necessary.
Personal Note – Restricted: Command Staff and Ensign Vos
Vos—
Good work doesn’t always look clean. Leadership rarely feels earned. Most days, you’ll doubt whether you handled it right. That’s normal.
What matters is you didn’t freeze. You stepped in. You took the hit so others didn’t have to. I saw that. Everyone did.
Keep your head clear and your guard up.
—Lt Cmdr Davaris
She stared at the signature line for a moment, then finally hit submit.
The padd chirped once, soft and final. The screen went dim a moment later, fading to her reflection in the black.
For a split second, she saw someone else in the glass—young, angry, bloodied, sitting in a brig with her hands wrapped in gauze.
She blinked.
Gone.
Kei stood slowly, rolling her stiff shoulder, and grabbed the padd off the desk. She had a shift rotation to review. A training roster to adjust. A ring still standing in Cargo Bay 2.
But tonight, for the first time in a while, she felt... steady.
Not because she’d written the right words.
But because someone else had earned them.
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