“I won’t give him a thing. Not a goddamn thing! They’ll have to strip my pips first.” After the inquisition of Robert Alastair Drake, she wasn’t sure it was worth it anymore. “I won’t testify against you. I can’t. Maybe I won’t even show up.” The galaxy was a big place. She could fade into the shadows, one of the forgotten, just like before.

“Why not?” asked Commander Lewis as he looked up at Chief Petty Officer Shafir from the floor of the holding cell where he’d been confined the last eight days. “If you skip out now, you’ll miss all the fun.” His sarcasm was palpable, and for a man charged with war crimes, he was remarkably relaxed.

She looked at him quizzically.

“You should come for the kangaroo court,” Captain Lewis added as a smile flickered across his face. “I hear it’s going to be quite a circus.” Word had reached him about what was happening beyond the four walls of his cell, and between the non-nonsense preliminary hearing officer and the JAG’s own sister showing up, it promised to be a spectacle, one he intended to slither right out of – hopefully more artfully than after Algorab.

Chief Shafir stared at him with a grave expression on her face. She didn’t understand. “I’m not selling you out. Or Doc Hall.” It felt like a betrayal to even respond to the JAG’s summons. She didn’t want to give the pompous prick a thing. “Not after all you’ve sacrificed for us… not after all you’ve done for me.” She locked eyes with the man who might as well have been her father. It wasn’t like her real one had ever been there like he had.

“Slow down and think, Ayala,” Captain Lewis said, holding her gaze as he pressed his forefinger to his temple. She wasn’t thinking straight. She was panicking. “What do you actually know?” He was not a fool. He never told anything to anyone that they didn’t actually need to know. Often, it was to protect himself as there were few he trusted, but in this case, it had been to protect her. “Go up there and be one hundred percent honest. To the facts. No speculation. Just the facts that you have firsthand knowledge of.”

That’s when it struck her. He was right. She’d inferred what he and the doc had done. She knew him well enough to know. But she didn’t actually know. Not as anything more than hearsay and inference. She’d neither witnessed it herself, nor had he admitted it to her. “What if I don’t want to give him the satisfaction?” It felt like letting him win to even let him drag her up there. “He killed Jace. He doesn’t deserve a fucking thing.” Robert Drake had salted their wounds and pressed on their traumas until it had been too much for the kid. He’d pressed the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger to make it stop.

“If you don’t go up there, he’ll come for your pips,” Captain Lewis warned. “It’ll be a consolation prize when he fails to take mine. Don’t give him that satisfaction.”

She nodded. 

He was right. 

But then the thoughts started flooding in. Memories of the last few months. The things she’d done. The things they’d been through. Her mind drifted to the city square on Nasera II, where they watched as the Vorta executed Petty Officer Jason Atwood. They didn’t even try to save him. Then she flashed back to the dark, claustrophobic tunnels beneath Nasera City. She’d held the detonator in her hand, and she pressed the trigger, ending Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan’s life. And then she was standing there in Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan’s quarters, looking down at his lifeless corpse, the phaser still warm in his hand.

She began shaking.

And then the tears.

Captain Lewis wanted to reach out, to offer a hand of compassion, but a forcefield separated them. All he could do was watch as she cracked and crumbled as the little boxes where she hid her traumas came falling down. He knew what she was going through. He’d been there, back when he was a young shooter, back before he’d gone completely numb to the pain.

She lowered herself to the ground.

She began to cry.

But then, as quickly as it came on, it stopped. 

Her tears dried up, and her eyes grew black. All the vulnerability, all the despair, it was gone, replaced by a hollow shell and a deathly coldness. “I want to kill him.” She said it in the lightest of whispers, but it did nothing to diminish the strength of her conviction. She meant it. She would do it. “I want to kill him, and the consequences be damned. He killed Jace. It is the way of things.”

Captain Lewis didn’t flinch, but hearing her say those words made his heart hurt. He knew this Ayala Shafir, the one he’d found in the shadows of the rim after she fell. He’d helped her find her way again, two sailors abandoned by their service, and together, they’d found purpose once more. They’d made a difference together, and they’d returned to Starfleet together. Allison Reyes had assured them they could make greater change from within. While the admiral had been wrong, having watched Ayala heal and grow with the pips on her collar, Captain Lewis didn’t want her to return to the way it had been before. 

When finally he spoke, Captain Lewis chose his words carefully. “I don’t disagree he deserves such a fate, but it cannot be by your hand.” His tone was firm, but there was something more… compassion. “You have a long life ahead of you, Ayala, and you need to get to doing that.” He said it like a father addressing a daughter from his deathbed.

“What about you, Jake?”

“What about me? Commander Drake will either fail… or he won’t” Captain Lewis shrugged ambivalently. But his ambivalence, for once, was a feign, a defensive wall he’d put up. As much as he wanted to tell himself he had no weaknesses, he found that deep in his heart, he wanted to be there for his team, his people, and his cause, and if Drake won, he’d have to retreat into the shadows once more. “I hope he doesn’t, but if he does, then he does.”

“Sometimes, you can be so fatalistic Jake,” Chief Shafir said as a single tear trickled down her cheek. The captain knew how to cover his tracks, but the JAG was a shark. The case might not go in his favor, and she wasn’t ready for those consequences.

“I have always done the right thing – the necessary thing – and I won’t start regretting it now,” Captain Lewis insisted firmly. And he meant it. Torturing the Vorta had ended the bloody battle in the charred cityscape of Nasera II, and executing the monster was the only appropriate choice after all the damage it had wrought.

Chief Shafir nodded. Her mind was made up. She would respond to the summons, and she would testify. Not for Drake, but in spite of Drake. “Then I guess…” she said with a light smile as she turned to leave. “I guess I’ll be seeing you shortly.”

He could see the nerves on her face. “Don’t look so down Chief. It’ll all work out,” Captain Lewis assured her. “And as for our friend, space is a big place, and accidents do happen.”

That made her feel just a little bit better.