No Longer, Not Yet Part I
Posted on Sun Nov 2nd, 2025 @ 12:53pm by Lieutenant Commander Corin Layal & Lieutenant Ezra Van Wijnbergen
Edited on on Mon Nov 17th, 2025 @ 5:03am
2,146 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
Episode 2 - The Sins of History
Location: Office of the Victim Advocate - Deck 9 - USS Artemis
Timeline: MD0018 0900 hrs
Layal stepped off the turbolift doors at Deck 9 and took a casual look around. The corridor wasn’t busy, and no one seemed to notice her presence, though she felt conspicuous as she made her way to the victim advocate’s office. She hadn’t visited there before, but she mapped it out before coming. She didn’t want to spend extra time in the halls, lest the Chief Counselor corner her for a casual conversation again.
This Deck smelled a bit more sterile than the others, though there was also an earthiness to the air, helped along by the Chief Medical Officer’s garden and the many offices that were often brewing fresh tea. When Layal approached Ezra’s door she paused, caught off guard by seeing his name in print, yet it was him she had come to see.
She took a deep breath and tried to swallow her nerves as she took the last few shaky steps toward his door. She closed her eyes as she reached forward and pressed the chime.
“Come in,” came a deep, baritone voice from within.
For the past forty-five minutes, Ezra Van Wijnbergen had been sifting through the Artemis’s old cases, searching for some way to develop a process he could create for himself moving forward. Fortunately–or unfortunately, he was the first Victim Advocate to serve here, and that meant finding ways to make his position as meaningful as possible for both the victims and the legal process itself.
Layal stepped inside the office. Just far enough so that the door sensors would catch and close behind her.
“Hey.” Layal gave him a shy smile made crooked as she chewed on her bottom lip. “You busy?”
Ezra looked up from his workstation and the data PADD in he’d been scrolling through, both screens nearly causing him to become crosseyed. For a second, his office felt impossibly small, like the space between them had contracted.
“Layal,” he said, his soothing voice carrying the typical calm that always seemed to be present. He smiled and placed the PADD on his desk. “Not at all. Come in. Make yourself comfortable. Would you like something–maybe some tea or coffee?”
“Sure, some tea maybe?” Layal took a few more uncertain steps into his office. He was casual, welcoming. He seemed at ease despite the fact that she had dropped in unannounced. She wished that she could be more like that… That she hadn’t been replaying their short exchange on Bajor over and over for the last few days until it finally brought her here.
“If you’re sure I’m not interrupting anything, I mean.”
He crossed to the small replicator unit on the far wall, his motions unhurried. “One carafe of kattelri tea. Two cups. Hot.” The replicator emitted a high-pitched whine followed by a shimmer that resolved into a clay teapot with an elongated handle set on a small tray with two glass cups.
“I was just reviewing old cases,” he went on, glancing at her over his shoulder. “Trying to figure out whether any of it will mean something for what I do here.” He turned around slowly and placed the tray on the desk between he and Layal, before pouring the hot, amber fluid into both cups.
“I couldn’t tell you, at least not now. I barely had enough time to work through the Vamcet materials when I got called out there. They were in the middle of the case when they lost their last JAG officer,” she explained. “They’ve been through a few prosecutors for such a short run. I hope it isn’t a sign.” She smiled, making it difficult to tell if she was serious or not. For someone like Ezra who had known her as well, as intimately as he had, he figured it was a little of both, her dry sense of humor often covering up some truth.
Ezra’s mouth curved faintly, though his eyes stayed fixed on the little curl of steam rising from the cups. “If it is a sign,” he said, “let’s hope it’s the kind that changes course before being noticed.”
He offered her one of the glasses–hot, light catching the rim like a sliver of gold–and waited until she’d taken it with both hands before sitting down across from her. The office wasn’t large; a single, bare wall display glowed dimly and highlighted just how barren a state the office still was. There was no viewport–this was an interior office.
The smell of Bajoran kattelri root filled the tiny room as their tea began the process of cooling.
“What can I do for you, Commander?”
“Is it Commander now?” She asked, her voice hitting a higher pitch that she expected as the question came out. “I was hoping we hadn’t come to that.”
Ezra had reached for the steaming mug but halted at her inquisitive words. He considered whether addressing her by rank had been a mistake. Their past was complex and Ezra’s feelings still remained unresolved. However, they were Starfleet officers in the Criminal Investigations Unit, and he felt it essential that any relationship they form should be based on mutual professional respect before anything else.
“I’m sorry,” he said, genuinely apologetic. “It might seem easy and straightforward to sit here and have tea with you. I’m second-guessing my words whenever I open my mouth.”
“I’ve thought about reaching out to you before.” The way she said it, it wasn’t so much of a confession, but a simple fact. “Several times, really. “I just didn’t know - didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.”
Ezra leaned back slightly and for a moment, he didn’t answer. Only studied her in the same patient way he seemed to look at everybody. The light from the overhead panel caught her thick brown hair.
“You thought I wouldn’t want to hear from you?” he asked, unsure if he wanted to hear the reason.
“Yeah,” Layal shrugged. “I didn’t know. I mean, I wanted to talk to you. I missed… You were always so easy to talk to. I felt like we had a connection. When I broke that trust…” She drifted off before refocusing her gaze on him.
“Things only got worse. I regretted going back right away.” This was a confession.
Ezra looked down into his tea, seeing the distorted face of a man who had chosen a different path than love. “You didn’t break any trust,” he offered. “You were faced with a decision.”
He fell silent for a long moment as he recalled their time together, studying her features. She was still the same Layal he had fallen in love with all those years ago with the exception of a few more lines.
“I think you did what you thought was right.” He exhaled heavily, not having been fully-prepared for such an emotionally-charged conversation with the only woman he had ever been in love with.
“Sometimes I think about where we might be today if you had chosen–if you hadn’t reconciled with him,” Ezra corrected himself. “Maybe it would have affected our careers. You wouldn’t be the successful Judge Advocate you are today. I wouldn’t have chosen the academic route.” He shrugged.
“Do you think we could have been happy though?” As she asked the question she fought hard to stay in the present, forcing the question to be more cerebral, knowing that if she reached into the past, into her feelings - that she would open a floodgate that would be difficult to stop. Happiness had been something that eluded her almost her entire life, but for a few times that she could recall. He had been one of them.
The question she asked seemed to touch something deep beneath his ribs–something old and not quite completely healed, but he refused to let it show.
He took a careful sip of the tea, letting the warmth of the liquid find his chest. “Happiness,” he said, setting the cup down with care. “I think we all believe it’s a destination. As though it’s some secret meadow that is bright and quiet where we find our way to after we do enough of the right things.” He leveled a steady gaze at hers. It was kind but a little tired. “After working trauma for so many years… you come to find that happiness isn’t a place people get to. It’s something they notice–if they’re lucky--along the way.”
He smiled faintly at her. “I think we had moments of it. And I think we would have been, yes.”
She wished he had a window she could look out of. Or that they were having this conversation on a lawn somewhere. The starship felt stifling, and she felt too small to be here.
“I guess we won’t ever know,” she said sadly. “But I always thought we would have been. That maybe there was more there between us - you and I - than whatever this is that I’m chasing down, trying to get out of this career, you know?”
Ezra nodded at Layal. “You’re right,” he said, voice low and words careful. “There was more. Always more. It’s what makes all this–” he gestured to the space between them “--so complicated.”
His gaze softened. He studied the curve of her brow, the way her hands rested lightly in her lap–folded with poise. “When you went back to him,” he said, eyes now downcast, “I felt sick. I couldn’t function for a long, long time. The idea of working at 315 after was… I couldn’t.”
The pain cut through Layal like a knife. Not just Ezra’s, but her own, because she had felt it too. Wondering how much simpler life would have been if she had followed her heart instead of trying to chase away some misplaced guilt she was feeling back then.
“I’m sorry. I have no right to come here, and stir up these old memories.” Layal looked at him, her eyes soft, the love she’d always feel for him still evident in the way that she looked at him. It was something that she couldn’t hide - not without careful precision.
“You never met anyone?” She meant to ask the question cautiously, but found her voice unintentionally shaking.
Ezra looked around the room for a long moment, unsure how he might respond. He had loved Layal like no other, and in the ten years since their torrid affair, no other woman had even come close to the connection he had had with her.
“I…” he faltered, unsure how to frame his response. “I’ve been on a few dates but…” He lowered his gaze to the floor, as though seeing his boots for the first time. He mustered a modicum of courage and looked back up at Layal. “Study and duty always kept me awfully busy, you know.”
Layal smiled softly. “Sure, I know,” she said in agreement. “Though, I often wondered… Was it that the work was really causing me to be too busy to connect. Or did I work so much… do I work so much to avoid the loneliness - so that I don’t notice that something is missing. The lines between cause and effect can sometimes get blurred. You know?”
“I do know,” he said. His voice was softer now, but still deeply baritone. “I used to tell myself that the work needed me. Over time, I’ve come to admit what it really is.”
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.
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
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