Routing Active Part II
Posted on Fri Jul 3rd, 2026 @ 2:26pm by Taryn Rook
Edited on on Fri Jul 3rd, 2026 @ 2:54pm
1,943 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Between The Orders
Location: Remy's Ship
"You used the override," she muttered. The words blurred at the edges. "That's cheating."
She tried to sit up, or maybe just prove she could. Either way, her body refused with immediate, humiliating clarity. Pain flashed behind her eyes and nausea rolled through her so hard she went still, lips pressing together until it passed.
"Foxy called you," she said, accusing the room more than him. "I hit the thing. But she called you dramatic."
That was not right.
Taryn frowned.
"No. I mean… I was dramatic. No. Ship was. Somebody was." Her eyes flicked toward the console, failing to focus. "Doesn't matter."
It mattered. It mattered enough that colour rose faintly under the grime and blood on her face, embarrassment finding her even through concussion and bad air.
"Don't do the big brother face," she said, softer, the words escaping before she could sharpen them. "I hate the big brother face."
She blinked again, slower this time. Her gaze moved past him toward the dim cockpit, the warning lights, the cracked environmental readout, the ship still humming around them in uneven breaths.
"Foxy okay?" she asked.
Not herself. Not first.
The question slipped out small and unguarded, and something in her expression shifted when she realised he had heard it. She tried to cover it, because of course she did, but there was not enough of her awake to build the wall properly.
"I'm fine," she said.
A beat.
Her eyes drifted, then dragged back to him with effort.
"Don't write that down."
Remy immediately moved to soothe the teen when he felt her stir and grow restless in his arms. "Hey... hey, it's alright. I got you. You're safe."
When his eyes met hers, a small, warm smile touched his lips.
Glancing around, he turned and carried her just outside the cockpit where there was fresher air coming from the airlock. Setting her down against the bulkhead, Remy took in her injuries cleaner, brushing her hair off her face to look at the nasty bruise around her temple. "Foxy's fine." He reassured Taryn while he continued to assess her injuries, feeling the heat off her skin without even needing to directly touch her. "But you're not. You are burning up. I'm going to take your jacket off before medical can get down here."
His voice calm and steady as he very carefully eased the jacket from her slender shoulders before taking the cuffs and gently tugging the sleeves down, watching her face and body language closely as he worked.
With the jacket off, he folded it to the side and glanced around at the repairs. "What happened out there, kid?" he asked while shifting to kneel more comfortably beside her without crowding her.
“Correction,” Foxy said from above, calm and unhelpful. “Foxy is operational. Taryn is not fine.”
Taryn’s eyes moved vaguely toward the ceiling.
“Snitch,” she murmured.
When Remy eased the jacket from her shoulders, her hand caught weakly at his wrist. It was not enough to stop him, just enough to show the instinct was still there. The movement pulled across her ribs and shoulder, and her breath caught before she could hide it.
Without the jacket, the bruising showed properly: dark across one shoulder, near the collarbone, with the restraint mark cutting across her chest from where the strap had caught her during the spin.
She looked down at herself, then back at him, blinking slowly.
“That looks worse than it is,” she said, but the words softened almost immediately. “Probably. Don’t make that face yet.”
Her gaze drifted past him toward the cockpit, to the warning lights and open panels.
“What happened out there, kid?”
Taryn swallowed, then winced.
“I went to Red Thread,” she said. “The signal bounced there, so I checked it. I wasn’t going to open the message on Foxy. I’m not that stupid.”
She stopped, as if hearing herself a second late.
“Okay. Maybe a little stupid.”
Her fingers pressed against the deck beside her, grounding herself while the corridor shifted unpleasantly.
“There was a man,” she said, quieter now. “Grey coat. He knew things he shouldn’t.”
Her eyes found Remy’s, unfocused but stubborn.
“He knew the old name.”
That landed harder than she seemed to want it to. Her mouth tightened, and for a second she looked annoyed with herself more than afraid.
“I handled it,” she said.
A beat.
“Mostly.”
Remy looked at her for a moment before letting out a slow breath through his nose.
"Yeah..."
The word carried a familiar sort of resignation, the kind reserved for people who had become someone else's problem long before they realized it.
"I've been made aware."
The corner of his mouth twitched as he shifted back slightly against the bulkhead, one hand resting loosely against his knee.
"By Red Thread. And the URC. I've spent the better part of today being briefed on your activities."
There was enough dry amusement in the statement to take the sting out of it.
"From what I can tell, several people had a very exciting afternoon."
His eyes drifted briefly toward the cockpit and the collection of warning lights, scorched panels, and emergency repairs before returning to her.
"The reports are actually pretty thorough. Remarkably thorough, considering most of them seem to have been written by people trying to figure out what you were going to do next."
For a moment he simply studied her, taking in the bruising, the dried blood at her temple, the stubborn set of her jaw that had survived even a concussion.
"But that's not really what I'm asking."
The humor softened without disappearing entirely.
"Because I know what happened. I've got reports for that."
He made a small gesture toward the cockpit.
"The ship happened."
Then toward her.
"You happened."
A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth.
"What I don't have is the part in the middle."
The words came easily, without accusation or judgment.
"The reports tell me what you did. They don't tell me why someone who usually knows exactly where the line is suddenly stopped caring where it was."
His expression gentled slightly.
"So what's missing, kid? What aren't they telling me?"
Taryn looked at him for a few seconds too long, trying to keep his face in one place.
It mostly stayed there.
That felt like progress.
“What’s missing?” she repeated, and the words came slower than she wanted. Her eyes shifted briefly toward the open corridor, then back to him. “A medic. Possibly two. One for me, one for your dramatic timing.”
The attempt at humour did not quite land. It came out tired, thinner than usual, and she seemed to know it. Her mouth pressed into a line as if she could shove the weakness back behind her teeth.
“I’m serious,” she added, though she did not sound it. “You can do the whole gentle interrogation thing after someone checks whether my skull’s still where I left it.”
She tried to adjust herself against the bulkhead and immediately regretted it. Pain moved across her shoulder and ribs, sharp enough to make her stop breathing for a beat. Her hand went to the deck beside her, fingers splayed flat against the plating until the corridor stopped leaning.
Her gaze flicked up to him again.
“I didn’t stop caring where the line was,” she said. “The line moved.”
It was more honest than she meant to be.
Taryn blinked, annoyed by that, by him, by the air, by the fact that the words had come out at all. Her eyes drifted toward the cockpit, where the warning lights still pulsed softly across the damaged panels.
“He knew things,” she said after a moment.
That was all. Or it was meant to be.
Her jaw tightened.
“Not report things. Not station gossip. Old things.”
She swallowed, and this time the wince was harder to hide. For a second she looked younger than she would ever willingly allow, sitting there without her jacket, bruised and pale under the bad ship-light, trying to keep hold of whatever version of herself still had teeth.
Then she looked back at Remy.
“And before you start, I didn’t tell you because you would’ve told me not to go.” A faint, stubborn edge came back into her voice. “And you would’ve been right, which is honestly the worst thing a person can be.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, trying for defiance and landing somewhere close to pleading by mistake.
“So can we please do medical first? Then you can be disappointed at me in a chair with better lighting.”
Remy huffed out an amused breath and couldn't quite stop the hint of a smirk at her comment before it formed. He opened his mouth to respond when the medical personnel arrived.
Glancing up at the men, he turned his attention back on Taryn. "Looks like you got lucky again this time, kid." He commented dryly before giving her a soft smile and brushing her loose strands back from her face. "We'll talk later." He confirmed with a nod before standing and gesturing for the personnel to proceed.
Heading for the door he turned back to point at the girl. "And don't give them a hard time. You have enough to answer for." he added before heading for the airlock. The both of us. he added to himself as he headed for his quarters to review the logs.
Taryn watched him go with her eyes only half-focused, the corridor still leaning in a way corridors were not meant to. The medical personnel moved in carefully, which was probably sensible of them.
“Lucky,” she muttered, mostly after Remy. “That was skill.”
One of the medics crouched beside her, tricorder already open. Taryn’s gaze slid toward the device, then to the man holding it.
“Before you start doing the whole concerned eyebrow thing,” she said, words slower than usual but still trying to find their teeth, “I only get into trouble a normal amount.”
The tricorder chirped.
The medic’s expression suggested the tricorder disagreed.
Taryn narrowed her eyes at it. “That thing’s biased.”
She shifted as if she meant to stand, made it less than an inch, and immediately decided the deck had some underrated qualities. Her jaw tightened, one hand pressing briefly against her ribs before she let it drop again like she had not meant to do it.
“I’m not going to give you a hard time,” she said.
A beat.
“Probably.”
The medics exchanged a look.
Taryn pointed weakly at one of them without quite lifting her hand. “Don’t do that either.”
Behind them, Foxglove creaked softly, wounded systems ticking in the walls. Taryn’s eyes drifted toward the cockpit, toward the dim panels and the ship that had dragged her this far on damage, stubbornness, and whatever counted as luck if you were being insulting about it.
Her expression softened for half a second.
Then she caught herself and looked back at the medic.
“If you sedate me,” she murmured, already fading around the edges again, “I’m haunting everyone.”
It should have sounded more threatening.
It came out tired.
Still, it was enough.
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