Where the Stars Have No Name
Posted on Sat Dec 6th, 2025 @ 10:43pm by Commander Rosa Coy & Commander Jenna Ramthorne
Edited on on Sat Dec 6th, 2025 @ 10:43pm
906 words; about a 5 minute read
Mission: Character Development
The bar wasn’t loud tonight, just the low murmur of off-duty officers, the soft glow of amber light catching glass and steel, and that faint jukebox hum that always made Jenna feel like she was perched on the edge of an old Earth jazz club instead of a starship docked at DS9.
Jenna sat on her usual stool, one elbow braced on the counter, fingers curled loosely around a half-finished drink. She was relaxed in the way only pilots ever were, the stillness of someone who had spent the day dancing with gravitational fields and now needed a moment where the world stopped spinning just long enough for her to breathe.
She was swapping stories with the bartender, mostly about Voyager’s return, which still felt fresh in her memory despite the years. The whole quadrant had buzzed when that ship burned back into Federation space. She’d been younger then, wilder, and far more certain she was immortal.
She laughed softly into her glass. “And when Tom Paris climbed out of that shuttle pretending he hadn’t just broken seventeen regulations to shave ten minutes off a flight path? Saints, that man had the smuggest grin I’ve ever seen.”
A voice behind her caught the tail end of her laughter. “Talking about famous idiots without me?”
Jenna turned. Rosa Coy, all cool lines and warm eyes, hair loose from duty for once, slid into the neighboring stool with the easy confidence of someone who’d already decided she belonged there.
Jenna nudged a glass toward her. “Join the wake. We’re honoring bad decisions made by great pilots.”
Rosa’s smile curved slow and crooked. “Tom Paris again? You’re predictable.”
“He earned it,” Jenna said. “Best hands on a helm this side of the Maelstrom Corridor. Even Janeway admitted that.”
Rosa snorted. “He’s flashy.”
“He’s brilliant,” Jenna corrected. “That man flew like the universe was something he could seduce.”
Rosa lifted her newly poured drink and clinked it against Jenna’s. “To overconfident flyboys, then.”
They drank. The warmth settled in easy. Conversation drifted, relaxed, the way it only could between two women who knew their crafts inside and out.
Jenna told a story about the time Paris tried to recreate a twentieth-century hovercar using shuttle components. Rosa countered with a tale about a Trill pilot who insisted inertia was “an outdated superstition.” Jenna nearly choked on her drink laughing.
And, naturally, the topic circled back. “You know,” Rosa said, tracing the rim of her glass with one finger, “I never understood the… aesthetic appeal of Tom Paris. People used to swoon.”
Jenna raised a brow. “Oh, come on. He’s handsome.”
“He’s average.”
“He’s charming.”
“He’s annoying.”
Jenna leaned back with a grin. “Coy, you prefer curves and softness. You’re biased.”
“Absolutely,” Rosa said, unapologetic. “The female form is superior. It's not up for debate.”
They laughed into their drinks. Another round arrived without either of them asking, the bartender knew a good rhythm when he saw one.
Sometime midway through the next glass, someone down the bar chimed in casually, “Paris settled down, you know. Married B’Elanna Torres. Little girl, too.”
The words floated in like harmless trivia. But they landed differently.
Jenna’s smile didn’t fade instantly, it slipped sideways, softened, hollowed at the edges. Her gaze drifted to the amber in her glass, watching the light bend through it.
Rosa noticed. Of course she noticed.
“You alright?” she asked, quieter than before.
Jenna exhaled. A slow, steadying release.
“I haven’t…” She paused, searching for the right music in the memory. “Loved anyone in a very long time. Not since Vic.” The name tasted old. A scar spoken aloud.
The hum of the bar grew softer around them, as though giving them space.
Rosa angled herself toward her, not pressing, just present, like a pilot adjusting trim in a crosscurrent. The Coy symbiont made her perceptive. Rosa herself made her careful.
Jenna didn’t cry. She rarely did. She just let the truth sit there, warm and aching, like a bruise rediscovered.
Rosa studied her from the corner of her eye. A thought flickered, soft, curious, undeniably human. She wondered what it would be like to lean closer. To pull Jenna’s grief into her hands and soothe it. To taste the fire behind that laugh. She wondered if Jenna could ever look back with something more than camaraderie.
But Rosa didn’t move. Didn’t reach. Didn’t tilt the moment toward anything it wasn’t ready for. She only nodded once, slow, respectful, and said, “Victor must have been lucky to have you.”
Jenna’s smile returned, fragile but real. “We were kids. Brilliant, stupid kids.”
“Still counts,” Rosa said softly.
The moment passed the way good moments do, not abruptly, but gracefully, sliding into the rest of the night like a stone sinking into deep water.
Jenna finished her drink. Rosa finished hers. They stood together, shoulders brushing just enough to acknowledge the shared weight without promising anything more.
“See you tomorrow,” Jenna said, easy again, but gentler.
“Try not to start any fights before breakfast,” Rosa teased.
“No promises.”
They parted in the corridor, Rosa turning left toward the crew quarters, Jenna heading right toward the turbolift with the soft, reflective gait of someone carrying both nostalgia and possibility.
A quiet ending. The kind that lingers.
RSS Feed