Broken but Not Beaten

Posted on 08 Sep 2026 @ 1:54am by Captain Sabrina Corbin & Lieutenant Commander Elias Harlan

2,206 words; about a 11 minute read

\\ Elias Harlan’s Quarters \\

Elias was trying not to be angry.

Jorik had explained his reasons for the prolonged “care,” and on paper the explanation held. Elias had even pulled up his own patient file and gone through it with the same methodical thoroughness he applied to engineering diagnostics.

Everything appeared above board. Jorik’s notations were meticulous — almost obsessively so. Every scan carried detailed commentary. Every visit, sometimes occurring as frequently as every two hours, was logged. Food intake, fluid consumption, sleep cycles, even bowel movements and the rare fragments of conversation had all been recorded with clinical precision.

It was more documentation than medical directives strictly required. Almost as if Jorik had anticipated that Elias would dig through the records the moment the fog lifted, and had deliberately left nothing for suspicion to take root in.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe Jorik had known Elias would still distrust the motivation behind it all.

And he did.

They knew each other too well for anything less. Their previous relationship — the one Jorik would almost certainly reduce to a “prior personal association” — had always been complicated. Elias still wasn’t entirely sure how the two of them had ever ended up married in the first place. They were as fundamentally opposite as two people could be. What they had shared had felt more transactional than unconditional, more carefully negotiated than freely given.

Elias had always told himself the difficulty stemmed from the simple fact that Jorik was Vulcan — that loving someone who treated emotion as a liability was an inherently uphill battle. Sometimes he wondered why Vulcans ever chose to involve themselves with humans at all. Curiosity? Intellectual interest? Some private experiment in controlled chaos?

He didn’t know. And he had no intention of becoming his own therapist just to find out.

To prove the point, Elias crossed to the replicator and ordered a mug of strong black coffee, hoping the familiar bitterness would wash away the questions that still insisted on circling.

Maybe it was better not to know what Jorik’s real angle had been.

He shrugged the thoughts aside.

What mattered right now was that he was alive and functioning under his own power. Jorik was still processing the latest scans to determine whether the neurological restrictions truly had an end date. Elias was more than ready to return to duty.

Vulcan doctors be damned.

He returned to the desk long enough to key a brief message to the Captain’s yeoman, inquiring whether she might have time for a short in-person visit. The Captain was a busy woman; he had no intention of imposing if her schedule was already full.

Once the message was sent, he showered, shaved, and took the time to trim his hair back to the short, precise cut he preferred — not out of vanity, but because it was simply easier to maintain. Instead of a standard duty uniform, he scrolled through the replicator catalogue until he found a transitional variant designed for officers returning from extended medical leave. The upper tunic was slightly looser, softer against the skin, and allowed freer movement through the shoulders and torso without looking out of regulation.

Soon he was dressed: polished black boots, well-fitted trousers, a soft undershirt, and the lighter tunic that still sat properly across his frame. The cane remained in his right hand for stability, but his legs felt steady beneath him. His gait had purpose again.

When he checked the terminal once more, a reply from the yeoman was already waiting. The Captain had an opening now if he was available. Elias accepted at once, clipped his combadge into place, and stepped out into the corridor.

The ship felt quieter than usual as he made his way to the turbolift. He rode alone to the bridge. When the doors parted, only a few heads turned at first — then did a double take as they registered who was walking purposefully toward the ready room.

Elias gathered what remained of his resolve, pressed the chime, and waited.

\\ Captain's Ready Room \\

The message from Merrick had been brief.

Commander Harlan has asked whether you have a few minutes for an in-person visit.

Sabrina had looked at it perhaps a second longer than necessary before answering yes.

Now she sat behind her desk with the morning's engineering material still open on her console, though she had stopped reading it several minutes ago.

The timing was difficult to ignore.

Only recently, she and Batenburg had been discussing the problem Harlan's absence had left behind. Engineering could continue functioning, of course. It was far too large and experienced a department to simply stop because its chief was unavailable, but leadership mattered. Collingway's departure had complicated an already difficult situation, and their proposed answer, putting Boren back into the role remotely under carefully defined medical restrictions, was unconventional enough that Sabrina expected several conversations before anyone approved it.

And now Elias Harlan wanted to see her.

She resisted the temptation to assign meaning to that.

Perhaps he wanted an update on Engineering. Perhaps he had learned about the proposal. Perhaps he was simply tired of receiving information through medical channels and wanted to see his Captain as something other than another name appearing on his recovery reports.

Or perhaps he intended to tell her he was ready to come back.

That possibility made Sabrina press her lips together.

Ready according to whom?

That was the part that mattered.

She wanted Harlan back. There was no question about that. She wanted the stability his return would bring Engineering, certainly, but more personally, she would simply be happy to see him upright and walking through her door. The last several weeks had reduced him too often to medical updates, restrictions, projections, and carefully worded assessments.

People became dangerously easy to turn into problems when viewed exclusively through reports.

Sabrina closed the engineering file.

Whatever frame of mind Harlan brought with him, she owed him the courtesy of hearing it before deciding what it meant.

The chime sounded.

For just an instant, the Captain disappeared beneath the quiet relief of knowing he had actually made it this far under his own power.

Then Sabrina straightened, smoothing one hand unnecessarily over the front of her uniform.

"Come."

The doors opened.

Her attention went first to Harlan's face, then inevitably to the cane in his right hand. He looked considerably more like himself than the man described in the medical reports. Groomed, composed, purposeful. Not quite back to normal, perhaps, but clearly determined that everyone understand he was moving in that direction.

A small, genuine smile appeared before she could moderate it.

"Commander."

Sabrina rose from behind the desk.

"It is very good to see you."

There were perhaps more formal greetings available to a Captain receiving a senior officer on medical leave.

She did not particularly care.

Her gaze flicked once toward the cane, taking note without lingering, before returning to him.

"Please, sit down. And before you tell me you're perfectly capable of standing, humor your Captain."

The faintest trace of amusement touched her expression as she gestured toward the chair.

Once he had settled, Sabrina returned to her own seat, giving him her full attention rather than reaching immediately for a report or asking for a medical update.

"I'll admit, when Merrick said you wanted to come up here personally, I was curious."

A slight pause followed.

"How are you, Elias?"

It was deliberately not What has Medical cleared you for?

She wanted to know which question he had actually come to answer.

Elias nodded and offered a small smile as he made his way to the chair in front of her desk. He sat carefully, automatically positioning the cane so it wouldn’t fall or get in the way. The motion had already become second nature.

“Captain, I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice.” He paused, eyes drifting briefly toward the corner of the room before he exhaled and looked back at her. “To answer your question… I’m fine. Physically. Otherwise, I’m a little perturbed, but that’s between me and Medical.”

His hands settled together in his lap.

“I’ll cut right to the chase. My latest neural scans are being compiled in sickbay right now. If they come back the way I expect them to, I’d like to be reinstated as this ship’s Chief Engineering Officer.”

Sabrina had expected the request, but hearing him actually make it still brought a quiet sense of relief. Harlan looked considerably better than the medical reports had made him sound, groomed, steady, and unmistakably himself again, though there was still a pallor to his complexion that kept her from mistaking improvement for full recovery.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” she said warmly. “And for what it’s worth, I would very much like to have you back. But I’m going to separate that from whether Medical believes you’re ready. That part isn’t mine to decide, however persuasive you intend to be.”

She folded her hands loosely on the desk. “Commander Batenburg and I have actually been discussing Engineering. With Collingway leaving, I don’t want the department going through another period without stable leadership, so we’ve been looking at whether Commander Boren could resume limited duties remotely. Oversight, coordination, senior engineering decisions. It was never meant to replace you, only to give Engineering some continuity while we waited to know what your future looked like.”

A faint smile touched her expression. “Apparently your future has decided to walk into my ready room ahead of schedule.”

Her gaze settled on him more seriously. “If those scans come back clean and Doctor Amberlyn is prepared to clear you, then yes, I want to discuss reinstating you. But I need to know what that actually means. Full duty, reduced hours, restrictions on emergency response, whatever Medical decides. Chief Engineer is not a desk assignment, and I’m not interested in putting you back into the position only to have you feel obligated to prove something to them, to me, or to yourself.”

The warmth returned, quieter this time. “You look good, Elias. Still a little pale, but considerably more like yourself. I’d prefer to keep that trend going.”

Elias nodded as the Captain finished, a quiet sense of relief settling in his chest.

“Thank you, Captain. I feel better. I’m not going to claim I’m a hundred percent or ready for an orbital paradrop, but…” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Doctor Jorik is still concerned about long-term motor control, so I expect he’ll keep some physical restrictions in place for a while longer. Honestly, we won’t really know how much until I start moving around again and putting the systems under real load.”

He exhaled slowly.

“The neural inhibitor therapy I was… subjected to appears to have done its job. It kept the impact site from being overtaxed while it healed. The seizures I never felt are all documented in my medical file. That was the reason the whole situation escalated the way it did.”

Elias’s gaze drifted briefly toward the far wall before he looked back at her.

“I don’t particularly enjoy being told to stay out of the tubes, but there are workarounds. I’ve never been one to shy away from delegating when it means the job gets done faster and cleaner. I’ll follow whatever restrictions Medical puts on me.”

He met her eyes again, voice quieter but firm.

“I just can’t sit in my quarters anymore. And I’d rather take another piece of shrapnel to the skull than go through that inhibitor treatment a second time.”

Sabrina listened without interrupting, the tension in her expression easing as Harlan spoke. The restrictions were not ideal, but neither were they disqualifying, especially if he was willing to delegate and allow his department to compensate for the things he could not yet safely do himself. That mattered more to her than whether he could crawl through a Jefferies tube.

“That sounds considerably more reasonable than I was afraid you might say,” she admitted, a small smile appearing. “If Medical clears you with restrictions, I can work with restrictions. Engineering has more than two hundred people in it. I would hope the Chief Engineer does not personally need to climb into every accessway to justify the title.”

Her eyebrow lifted slightly at his final comment. “Though I am going to strongly recommend we keep both additional shrapnel and neural inhibitor therapy off your schedule if at all possible.”

Sabrina leaned back in her chair, considering him for another moment. “Let the scans finish. Let Doctor Jorik and Doctor Amberlyn decide what the boundaries need to be, and if they clear you, bring those restrictions to me. We’ll build your return around them rather than pretending they aren’t there.”

The smile that followed was warmer. “And if all of that goes the way you expect, Elias, I will be very happy to give you your department back. I suspect Engineering will be rather happy about it as well.”

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