No Longer, Not Yet, Part II
Posted on Mon Nov 3rd, 2025 @ 1:40pm by Lieutenant Commander Corin Layal & Lieutenant Ezra Van Wijnbergen
Edited on on Mon Nov 17th, 2025 @ 5:16am
1,902 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Episode 2 - The Sins of History
Location: The Office of The Victim Advocate - Deck 9 - USS Artemis
Timeline: MD0018 1000 hrs
He leaned forward in his chair and touched the side of his nose. “The truth,” he added, “is that it doesn’t need us. It just gives us some place to hide.”
“It is important work, though,” she added. “It’s part of what makes it so easy to lie to ourselves. Tell ourselves how much we’re needed. That maybe there’s a legacy we’re building somewhere in there.”
Ezra reached for his cup of tea, bringing the hot beverage to his lips in a careful motion. It was now cooling to a safer temperature and he took a bigger sip, tasting the bitterness mixed with soft, fruity notes.
“Layal,” he said, setting the tea back on the desk with gentle clank. “Where do we go from here?”
“Ezra.” Layal let out a baited breath. She’d been trying to get to a point. To say something. To ask something. To work her way toward a moment, or something. But she had been dancing around what was really on her mind long enough. He had a point to call her out, to speak more plainly. There was too much history between them for anything less.
“I don’t know, Ezra.” Layal looked at the floor shyly, her tea on Ezra’s desk in front untouched. She pressed her palms against the tops of her thighs, her uniform pants, soft and cool against her skin. She took a deep breath in, knowing that she needed to get out what she was about to say next in a single breath or she may never finish the thought.
“I don’t know, and I probably shouldn’t have come here. But, I’m still in love with you. I always have been. And I just had to say it. I don’t know,” Layal stopped to catch her breath, her voice shaky again, unintentionally, but she continued. “I don’t know how to, if I can just be friends with you. But, I’ll figure it out if that’s what you want. If you don’t even want that, well I understand that too. This is harder than I thought it would be.”
A lump formed in Layal’s throat as soon as she stopped talking. It was painful, and the tension stretched somehow into her jaw. She was torn between wanting to run out of the door in embarrassment, and feeling glued to the chair eager to hear his response, whatever it would be, just so that this moment could finally be over.
For a long moment, Ezra couldn’t move. His entire body felt weighted down into his office chair as though her words were some invisible entity that had paralyzed him. He could feel her words deep in his chest–just behind the sternum–as if they’d been waiting inside him all this time, hidden beneath so many quiet years of work and the weight of everything he’d convinced himself to forget.
He took another look at her. She had the same eyes that always seemed to undo him in ways that simply could not be given voice. They were eyes that knocked him down on a on a terrace in the southern foothills of Casperia Prime. The same lips that had once pressed against his collarbone while they watched twin suns rise behind the hills. Time had gentled her, but she was still so much the same. Still the woman he’d loved enough to lose sleep over. Enough to lose himself over.
He drew a slow breath, steadying his hands around the cup though the tea had begun to grow cold. His throat ached from holding too much inside. Everything he had wanted to say. Everything he knew he shouldn’t.
“Layal…” Her name left his lips partly as a rough-edged exhale.
He wanted to cross the space between them. To reach across that desk, take her face in his hands, and pull her back into the shared silence they once knew–that silence that didn’t require words. He wanted to forget where they were, what uniforms they wore, and who they’d both become.
But here they were–on a ship. In Starfleet’s grey uniforms. With walls that listened and lives that no longer belonged just to them.
He blinked and it felt as though he were forcing himself awake. “You have no idea,” he said, “how many times I’ve imagined hearing those words again.”
He forced a faint smile and hoped it might appear more measured than the chaos he was feeling beneath it all. “But I think we both know…” He paused, choosing each word carefully–as though they were capable of cutting him as they left his mouth. “We’re not those same people anymore. The work we do–it needs us clear-headed. Grounded.”
He glanced down at his hands, seeing the small tremor in them, and then back up to her. “Maybe what we can be now is… careful. Friends who understand each other more than anyone else ever could.”
The word friends hit him so hard that it almost felt as though someone else had uttered the word. He could feel the concussion of it rip through him, hollowing something vital and sacred out of his heart.
He wanted to take it back the moment he said it.
But he didn’t.
He met her eyes again, and there was sorrow there, yes–but also gratitude. “I’m glad you came,” he said, his voice low and shaky. “Even if it hurts.”
Layal felt deflated. She had told herself not to get her hopes up. She wasn’t even sure what she was expecting to happen today, but when he had said the word friends it was if she had taken a hard blow to the chest, one that she wasn’t sure she would ever recover from.
The rest of his words passed over her like some automated message from a computer terminal when you are still half asleep. She was faintly aware that he was talking still, but she couldn’t process what he was saying.
As she felt Ezra’s piece coming to a close, Layal began to nod slowly. She fought to keep her face composed even though her mouth was running dry and the walls seemed to be closing in around her. She knew she couldn’t stay there much longer, she needed to get away, back to her quarters.
“Sure. Makes sense. You know. At least I got that off my chest.” Her words were thin, and she wondered if they sounded as fake as they felt as she stood up from her seat.
“Sorry to take up so much of your time, anyway. I’ll just uh, I’ll see you around.” Layal turned her face away quickly, afraid the tears would fall before she made it to the door.
Ezra stood before he even realized he was moving. The chair’s legs scraped softly against the thin layer of carpet over the deck, and then he was on his feet–his body acting on something beyond thought.
“Layal,” he said, his voice sounding foreign.
He came around the desk, fearful she might vanish into the corridor before he could reach her. When he did, he stopped just short of touching her, the scent of her hair–warm, clean, and faintly floral–stirring something sharp inside his chest that nearly stopped his heart.
“Don’t go,” he said pleadingly, his voice rough.
Layal stopped just short of the door, but she didn’t turn around.
“Was there something else?” She asked stiffly. She was fighting so hard against keeping her own voice from breaking, she didn’t notice the difference in his. She kept her eyes focused downward, on the part of the wall that met the floor, paying too much attention to the sharp lines of the right angles, the threshold of the door. The tears she was holding back were beginning to sting, and it hurt to swallow.
He stood there behind her, the distance between them small enough that he could see the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders, and the tremor at the edge of her breath. He wanted to say her name again, but it seemed to catch somewhere in his throat–much too fragile, too heavy.
“I just…” His voice faltered. The words he needed were there, just below the surface, but they felt dangerous now–as though they might somehow unmake them both. “I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he managed. “For the way things ended. For the years that followed. For not…” He swallowed. “For not finding a way to tell you that I never stopped caring.”
“It’s not you that has anything to apologize for, Ezra,” Layal replied, her words coming out more harshly than she intended. Or maybe not. She took a breath in and stepped forward, activating the automated doors. She continued walking, stepping through slowly, only quickening her pace once she was sure she was out of sight from his office doors.
Ezra stayed where he was, rooted to the floor, his chest tight and heavy. For what seemed an eternity, he let himself lean his forehead against the cool metal of the wall, letting it bear some of the weight from the ache which seemed to seep right out of his bones. His eyes closed, and he could still feel her presence there, even though the room was now empty.
He fought the instinct to follow her, to call her name again, to make her turn around. The rational part of him, the part that had survived years of discipline and caution, pressed against the pleading part inside him that wanted nothing more than to reach through a wormhole in space and time and undo the things that had kept them apart.
Slowly, reluctantly, he pulled himself back from the wall, and glanced across to the desk. The tea cup she had set down remained there–a thin wisp of steam curling upward from it. He stared at it. It was the only reminder she had even been there, had spoken from her heart.
In his mind, he attempted to put it all into perspective: they were both still here on the Artemis. Not together, not yet, but still, in some way, present to each other. And for now, that would simply have to be enough.
The turbolift ride felt like an eternity for Layal, as she avoided eye contact and prayed she didn’t run into anyone who wanted to talk, or prophets forbid invite her in for tea. When the coast was clear on the deck to her quarters she broke into a run, barely making it behind closed doors before the tears fell.
A Joint Post By
Lieutenant Commander Corin Layal
Judge Advocate General, USS Artemis
Starfleet Criminal Investigations Unit
Lieutenant Ezra Van Wijnbergen
Victim Advocate Counselor, USS Artemis
Starfleet Criminal Investigations Unit
RSS Feed